My Hell Week Between China and Costa Rica (3/4)
April 18, 2008 – 7:16 pmThis day, Friday would be the toughest day of the hell week.
Briefly after I crawled out of bed and took a long, cold shower, the other American students and I had our graduation lunch with our program administrator, the program assistant, and the two professors assigned to teaching only the American students.
One of the professors asked me, “Why do you look so serious today?” Because in attempts to quell my pounding headache, I was gritting my teeth so hard that my jaw looked as if it was stuck.
The end of our Friday night. After our medley was dinner, karaoke, and bowling. Taken at the bowling alley.
Any sane person would’ve gone to sleep right after the graduation lunch, but I had to wait until the last minute to buy souvenirs.
For my aunts, I knew I should get tea, but finding the right kind took a while. I had to go from store to store and tried to understand the different accents of the shopkeepers who come to Shanghai from all over China while my head felt as if a whole team of Chinese guys were playing soccer inside. One of my cousins specified Chinese comics, but even after bouncing from one end of the university to the other, I still couldn’t find any authentic Chinese comics and had to settle for translated Japanese manga. Then one of my friends wanted a rock, just a rock. But do you know how hard it is to find a good rock in the sprawling urbanscape of Shanghai?
At last, I got back to my dorm around four in the afternoon and thought I could finally take a nap before the long night ahead. Just when I was about to drift off to sleep, my roommate told me we were meeting up at five o’clock with everyone. I’m sure you know how annoying it is to be almost entering sleep mode just to be pulled out of it by someone you don’t really have the heart to be upset at.
We gathered in the lobby at five and ended up having to wait for the rest of the people until 6:30 PM. I could’ve been sleeping in those one and a half hours.
Our two-hour dinner was followed by karaoke, which lasted over two fun-filled hours (”Everybody” is a rather convenient song for…well…everybody to sing together), and then we went bowling (I really shouldn’t have been allowed to handle heavy objects like bowling balls at that point). We got back to the dorms around three in the morning.
Oh yeah, I hadn’t started packing yet. That was the last time I packed last-minute. (Okay, that last sentence was a lie. I got pretty good at packing fast and thereby became cocky and packed as late as I could.)
So, after packing I took a brief nap (emphasis on “brief”), awakened to my roommate yelling angrily, “Wake up! You have a flight in three hours!”
Thanks, Nick. Tough love.
