Shanghai (2/23 - 2/26): Preparations for Shandong

I arrived in Shanghai around 9:00 p.m.-ish, made my way through customs and grabbed a cab for my apartment. Waiting for me there was Tiffany who, as you know, has been staying at my place while she's training with Yang Laoshi and Zhu Wen Jun. We caught up for a bit and I watched a bit of my downloaded torents on the computer. The next day I went to watch her practice. The school had moved the wushu athletes to a new wushu guan, which is just across from the rhythmic gymnastics hall. It's nice to see all the athletes in one place training together. It's more like the courtyard scene from Shaolin Temple. I observed Tiffany's practice for a while and talked with Yang Laoshi a little bit. After class it was our intention to do some shopping before we had to head out to Jinan the next day, but after we got back to our place, ordered some lunch and settled in a bit we ended up just chilling out at the apartment most of the afternoon. In the evening we did end up going shopping on nanjing lu at one of the bargain places and we both bought a bunch of stuff from Jack the jewelry guy. I took Matt Wong, Matt's aunt and a few other friends there so that guy probably really likes me by now. He gives me good deals, at least. After that it was really pouring outside so we walked a bit and found a taxi to meet up with Tam at the Korean BBQ place. But the place had closed down! So we spent the next hour or two looking for a new all-you-can-eat-meat type of place. We finally found a great one not too far from my old home and got our fill of all-you-can-eat tenpanyaki. It was awesome. After that Tiff and Tam went clubbing so I headed home and went to bed. Earlier in the day I had called Lu Laoshi in Jinan and he said that Sunday wasn't good for us to go up north. It turned out that they all got back to work on that day and were super busy in meetings, so we rescheduled our flight to leave on Monday instead. That meant we had an extra day for shopping! Sunday morning the three of us woke up late, missing a lunch appointment with Zhu Wen Jun at Ding Tai Fung. We headed up to Hong Mei Lu for some shopping, but everyone was quite hungry so we deicded to get some food first and then come back. Ding Tai Fung wasn't open yet so we grabbed a quick bite at a Korean restaurant and THEN went to Ding Tai Fung (when you gotta have it, you gotta have it). Dumplings were good as always. Then it was back to the Hong Mei Lu shopping place where I picked up some luggage and a few odds and ends. Tiffany and Tam also picked up some stuff. After that it was back to home for some TV and shut-eye. My internet was problematic the whole time I was in Shanghai too. I tried skyping my mom for her birthday but couldn't get through, and attachments to email gave me problems too. Not sure why, but since I'm not really in Shanghai that much I didn't look in to it. The next day it was time to leave for Shandong. We spent some time packing and then caught a taxi to Hongqiao airport where we boarded our afternoon flight to Jinan. I'll write more about that in the next entry. Oh, and since most of my pictures were taken in Jinan I don't have anything to show here except this quick one I snapped in the cab on the way to the airport ... Tiffany in the cab on the way to the airport