Some Accomplishments in Shanghai

In the brief time I have been in Shanghai, I have managed to accomplish the following:

• Be reunited with Grant, a good friend from school, who (whom?) I will be exploring Shanghai with
• Be reunited with relatives that I have in Shanghai
• Try out the one and only phrase I know in Shanghainese, which unfortunately I don’t know the characters for with the Shanghainese pinyin so I’ll just type it in Mandarin: ”我不懂“ (“I don’t understand”)
• Eat absolutely delicious soup dumplings (汤饺) with pork filling
• Taste this apple juice（苹果汁) + milk（牛奶）drink thing Grant bought from a street vendor
• Have my photos stealthily (and sometimes not so stealthily) taken by Chinese passersby (I look pretty Western and have pale skin; Grant looks very Western and is over six feet tall – for the Chinese, we are quite the spectacle)
• Use broken Mandarin to buy a token for the Huangpu River ferry and a single-ride ticket for the subway
• Fall down a flight of stairs and cut up my knees (I had the sense to fall near the Shanghai Museum, which I was going to anyway, and I received the BEST first aid treatment I’ve ever gotten from the staff there. Props, Shanghai Museum, mad props)
• Go to the Shanghai Museum. My favorite exhibits were the jade and ceramics.

To think I’ve accomplished all this and I’ve only spent one full day in this city – I’m supposed to be here for a full week!