The entrance to Fudan University has a huge statue of Mao looking over it. According to Li Lei, a lot of old universities had the statues of Mao as well, but have since taken them down. The one at Fudan University remains standing. The topic of the lecture today was the development and history of Shanghai. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. The lecturer, a professor at the university, was a genuine professor in the sense that he managed to convey an enthusiasm for the topic he was lecturing on, and adeptly answered any and all questions thrown at him. I also have to say that Chinese universities are pretty well funded/constructed. Continuing the trend I'd observed in the Guangzhou education megacentre and the Beijing universities, Fudan University was huge as well. After the lecture we took a 'bus tour' of the campus. Pretty awesome. Should probably mention now before I forget, whenever we turned up to universities we were usually given a small pin as a gift/souvenir with the university logo on it. Pretty nifty. Wonder if our university has them?
So nothing much remarkable about lunch, except that I thought I'd left my watch there. I tend to take it off and rub my wrist. Weird habit. Can usually lead to loss of watch. It's happened before. But luckily most times I've been able to retrieve it. I figured on the long bus trip to this random port that I'd lost it for good, cause there was no way we'd be heading back to the restaurant where we'd had lunch. Figured it was time for a new one anyway, so I wasn't too bummed out about it. The bus ride was pretty damn long. I think about 2-3 hours? Don't really remember. Anyway, we'd gotten there, and for what? To take a few photos. Coolios. Here's the port.
If I'd been travelling with my family I'd probably be raging (yes, it's a lovely term to use), because I dislike stopping at random spots to take photos. But with CSPers it's a different story. Our awesome group.
This is named, 'We rode on a bus for three hours to get this photo'. No jokes. The trip back wasn't too bad. Since most of us had knocked ourselves out on the way there, we took note of the humungous bridge we had to cross to get to that port.
I don't actually know how long it is, but it took us 20 minutes to cross its entirety. On the way back we fell back into another CSP tradition - singing on the bus. Now typically, only Eric (our tour guide, if you don't remember) does the bus concert with a few supporting acts. But because Connie decided to play the 'who's the most...' game with us, things were a little different. Especially with the, 'who's the quietest', it seemed that to prove that you weren't the quietest, you had to sing. So there I was, up the front of the bus again, descrating U2's 'With Or Without You' (Mika's 'Happy Ending' had already been done earlier in the trip). For the record, Carrie was voted the loudest (only cause she loves us, aww!), Jingjing narrowly beat out Sirui for the sleepiest (pretty hard to beat someone who fell asleep standing up at arguably the most important formal event of the trip in the People's Hall), Annie Kwong as the quietest (but not actually that quiet if you talk to her first!), and Derek the cutest (leave that one up to you guys).
When we rolled back into Shanghai, we were given an hour or so to explore the riverside area where Shanghai's TV tower was situated.
It looks cooler at night, but make sure you go see it before 10pm because that's when the lights go out in Shanghai. Environmentally friendly. Monica had spotted a Cold Stone ice creamery a short distance a way and made a beeline for it as soon as we'd gotten off the bus. Connie had also experienced the miracle of Cold Stone on her exchange to America before, so she wasn't passing up this opportunity either. The rest of us decided to see what the hype was about.
Ok, so the basic premise of Cold Stone (we have an equivalent, called Cold Rock, in Australia, but it doesn't look as nice), is that you combine really good icecream with anything nice you can think of, and mash it all together. Sounds pretty ordinary right? Well the concept is. But it's all in the delivery.
Step one: Pick you ice cream.
Step two: Pick you ingredients
Step three: Mix and mash on a cold stone (geddit?)
Step four: Enjoy
Now for me, I had no idea icecream went with what ingredients so I decided to go with a preset combination called the Founder's Favourite. Gotta start with the original, right? Sweet cream icecream, packed with pecans, brownie, fudge and caramel. Yummy. Seriously, all credit to Monica, I didn't think it'd be that great but it totally knocked my socks off. The place is really nice as well. Think Starbucks but less chic and more jolly. Helped along by the people who work there, and who randomly start singing tunes as they work. They seem like a happy bunch.
On the way back, Tina had a slight accident, stepping into setting concrete. Luckily her shoe wasn't ruined.
Wonder if her footprint is still there?
The night was fairly uneventful. We practised our performance for the farewell party tomorrow, and while the girls wanted to hit the clubs, the boys packed it in for the night. Tomorrow would be the last day of CSP.
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