SMU Update 6/2/14

For me this was my last weekend I planned to go downtown in Shanghai. Originally we wanted all the international students including the Americans, Ukrainians, our friend Alex from Denmark, the two kids from Poland, and the Koreans to go downtown and get together and have one more final celebration before leaving China and going back to our respective countries. We, and by “we” I definitely don’t mean me because I am such a terrible planner, had been making arrangements all week long so everyone was on the same page. I guess not everyone decided to show up but for the most part people did and we had a really great time Friday night! We stayed in our favorite hostel where they employees have gotten to know us very well. They don’t even charge us the 20 RMB for loosing room keys anymore, lucky us! The next morning most everyone went about shopping and getting last minute gifts for family members, myself included. Later in the evening we went to one of our favorite places, Helen’s International Bar and Restaurant where we ate and hung out with each other for a while. We saw friends we had met there before and said goodbye one last time. Afterward we went go karting at a place very near to our hostel. I originally planned not to go but after getting lost on the subway and retracing my steps back to Helens I had no choice but to catch a cab with the other students and go. I’m glad I got lost because it was so much fun. There was a group of nine of us and they let four or five on at a time. I was a little scared to go with the boys so me and Mary, our friend from SMU, decided to go in the second heat to avoid being slammed by another go-kart. They were all amped up and planning on bumping into each other, and that honestly scared the hell out of me, it looked like it hurt, a lot. After watching the boys go it was our turn. Those. Go karts. Fly. They were so fast and it was so hard to turn the wheel and avoid colliding with the bumpers! Even though I thought it was safer in the second round someone ended up colliding with my kart and I instantly had a headache. Thankfully our time was up and I could sit down for a sec and stop feeling too light headed. We got back to the hostel around one after walking a half mile to find a cab, the go-kart place wasn’t exactly near a main road, we were lucky an empty cab decided to drive down into the middle of nowhere Shanghai. The next day everyone was tired so we headed back to SMU to relax before having to prepare for finals week! Yay ……….