So where are all the Expats at?

Hey All!

@Zapatas Shanghai :)

Hope everything is good with you back in the states or on your own study abroad adventures! Life has been simply smashing since the last time I blogged. I got the testing out of the way (yes!), and moved on to exploring my home for the next 3 months. So in an effort to further our social educations, we decided to use last night as that first of many explorations of Shanghai's nightlife. What you have to understand about Shanghai is that nightlife not only means clubbing, drinking, and a string of open bars, no cover dance parties, etc, but also includes a huuuge food scene!

If you just want to read about clubbing, scroll down lol.

Seafood Heaven

On the food front, per usual, Shanghai didn't disappoint. Our campus has many different gates or "们" that allow students to enter and exit from a variety of locations. The back gate in particular plays host to a crazy amount of street food vendors and pop up food stands that come out late at night (think pop up Tuscany!). With dozens of little twinkling lights illuminating the outskirts of the campus, students have the opportunity to taste bbq'd meats, veggies, and seafood on a stick, along with ordering fried rice, noodles, or just dozens of bottles of beer. Last night prior to going out, we sat down with some other internationals and had snacks of the "on a stick variety." I personally had octopus, but then also had this amazing scallop with garlic sauce (see picture). Shanghai has some awesome seafood and it's all really fresh/cheap. Each item on a stick ranges from 1.5rmb-7rmb (.10-1.00usd).

pomegranate tree on campus!

After finishing some drinks and our food, we hopped a cab to the French Concession area of town, which is home to cosmo spots like XinTianDi and Huaihai Rd, both of which boast awesome shopping during the day and raging parties at night. Since it was Wednesday, we decided to go to Zapatas, a Mexican bar/club that has a "ladies night" (those are super popular here haha) with free margaritas. The atmosphere was great, with outdoor seating and indoor dancing, the area was packed with foreigners, which was a nice change from campus. Silly side note-I never thought I'd be super shocked by something I saw in China at this point, but after walking into the club to see three Asian girls dancing ontop of the bar in itty-bitty shorts and shirts that said "我爱Tequila" (I love tequila), I think I was proven wrong.

Scallop!!!

We met a lot of cool people who were either in Shanghai studying or for business, like a Brazilian dermatologist. Although the club was great for meeting foreigners, we soon acknowledged it was home to some skeezy people too, like this random guy who kept creeping in on our dance cirles, or the random 45+ year old eastern euros hiding behind clouds of smoke. Besides the tequila girls and couple of creepers, there was one really entertaining couple...nothing beats seeing a middle aged Chinese couple dancing on top of a bar.

After dancing for 2+hours, we ended up making friends with a group of guys from Sweden (the hair was a bit of a give away once we'd eliminated Australia) and cabbed over to Jing An Temple to Windows (drinks were soooo cheap), and stayed there till about 3am. The guys were definitely cool and we'll probably go out with them again since they seem to know good spots. Thank goodness for cheap cabs, drink specials, and random adventures.

Anyway, headed out tomorrow night too...we have to get in as much socializing before classes start as  possible. As always, keep in touch!

-e