An Exciting Shanghai Weekend

This weekend, I went out on a grand tour of the city with the new girl, Kathleen, and Claire, pretty Shanghai lady, WangYue, Jenny from the office, and Kathleen's distant cousin, Victor. I must admit, I was a little apprehensive at first because it would be going out with total strangers, however, I think in the end, we all had a lot of fun.
Day one we all met up at noon at Kathleen's uncle's office. Being it was the weekend, the building wasn't air-conditioned so we sat in a tiny little office waiting for Kathleen to get there while we chatted with Claire. Then we all went out to lunch with Kathleen's uncle to a Shabushabu place. Shabushabu is basically hotpot. The strangest part of the meal was the appetizer/"sushi." What made it odd was that the sushi was actually thinly sliced beef that we're normally accustomed to putting into the shabushabu soup to cook. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, I ate raw meat. And liked it.
After that, I went - again - to XiangYang. I bought a nifty purse for my sister (I think you'll like it May) but other than that, there wasn't anything interesting there. We made a stop at Mister Donut, where I introduced everyone to the wonder that is the chocolate pon de ring (chewy donuts, yum!).
Next, we went to XinTianDi which I already went to as an office fieldtrip. Same as last time, very nice but all in all too expensive to enjoy. Next we went to a bar called Face which was located in some sort of gated community place. It was horribly expensive like XinTianDi and was also filled with foreigners. The the interior was very interesting. Apparently Face is a Thai styled bar. We lounged there for over an hour and Kathleen picked up a monster mosquito bite kind of the like the ones I got when I first arrived.
Afterwards it started to get a lot more fun. Claire took us to a really nifty store that took factory leftovers from brands like Diesel and Yohji Yamamoto. I am now the proud owner of a really awesome Yamamoto jacket. Yippee! Next was dinner at a horrifically ugly looking restaurant that nevertheless cooked good food. Claire brought her boyfriend for us to meet - an extremely tall Dutch man charmingly named Bob. Bob was very polite.
Yesterday after a horrible morning of coordinating, I managed to get everyone to meet up at 12:30 and we proceeded to ChenHuangMiao - yet another super touristy place. The featured attraction is a villa complex once belonging to a very rich man. We wandered around there for over two hours, sweating like crazy. Then we went to Pudong where we walekd by the water and went to a restaurant that specialized in delicious mango deserts. Mango pudding...yummmm. Next was an o so exciting but very short ferry ride across the water to Puxi where we walked for half an hour into the Bund just to climb up onto a people filled platform to get a few people filled shots of the Pearl Tower. Then there was dinner at an alley that specialized in street food. Mmm, street food. We ended up only eating five ShenJianBao apiece. And everyone was too polite to say they were still hungry. Next we went to a snazzy bar in the middle of some park and ended up spending over 200RNB on yucky drinks. I ordered a pina colada and asked for no alcohol, but there was definitely some when I got it. Yuck, alcohol. At drinks we met Bud the art director from Cleveland who seems to strongly dislike the Japanese (all the while I was thinking about my cute little nephew - how can you possibly hate him?) and his prettily dressed up, extremely young companion for the evening and Claire's friend, Kelly. At around 11, I pointed out that tomorrow there was still work and we had to try to catch some form of public transportation. Yah, all the subways were closed, and none of the buses went where we needed to go, so we ended up splitting an expensive cabride, but not before we ran into various convenience stores to buy some food because we were Starving!
This morning, I finally saw Yuko and Kaigen after not seeing them all weekend. Kaigen called me a few times to yell at me for not telling them where I went, and then Yuko sent me a very polite text message saying that I can stay out as long as I want, but please call every so often to let them know I'm alive. Yuko said this morning that Kaigen is afraid that if I get lost or something my parents will kill him. I guess he still lives in fear of my daddy. ^_^
All in all, though, a great weekend. I made a lot of new friends. Yay!