A somewhat odd day. That’s the only way to describe it. I mean, counting customers at a McDonald’s and Burger King in China? Yeah, strange-sounding. Anyways, Irene and I were assigned McDonald’s while Jane and Christian went to Burger King and it was chaos. We got there around ten minutes early to give ourselves enough time to order food and find a seat. The line was not only enormous, there were also no seats. We almost didn’t get a seat by noon, our designated start time.
Coincidentally, when we started counting, the foot traffic started getting more intense. We could barely keep up with the people walking in and since we weren’t just counting, but also taking down demographic information, we were writing like mad men. For 45 minutes, we were writing and writing and I’m glad the last 15 minutes were relatively calm. We ended up with about 340 people in an hour. I-N-S-A-N-E. Treated myself to a funky tasting ice cream cone topped with honeydew melon syrup afterward.
Got home and compiled the data and actually did some work. For dinner, Joe and I ordered from Hello Pizza, which sells personal pan pizzas. I got a classic pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and for only 22 RMB, it was good and filling.
After spending the last three days doing what tourists would do, it was time to do something many tourists usually wouldn’t do: visit a rural village. The last time I stepped foot in a village was twelve years ago when I was last in China and visited my dad’s home village, Taishan. This time, I got to see our tour guide’s village. To get there, we took a relaxing two hour boat ride there (cue “I’m on a Boat”).
The village was what I expected. Lots of farmland, farm animals and dogs running around, etc. Of course, this village had a ton of water buffalo. We got to meet Jessie’s family, which was nice. The family runs a convenience shop (possibly the only one in the village) and it seemed strange seeing cup noodles in the village.
Water buffalo!
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The most important thing about living in Shanghai for us NYU students is of course, our home in Shanghai. NYU in Shanghai gave us two options: on-campus dorms or off-campus apartments. I chose the off-campus option and I finally got around to taking pictures of my apartment and uploading them. So here’s a comprehensive photo tour!
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In an ideal world, this post would be about Day 6, but NYU has sure kept us busy. Since orientation week is nearing it’s end, I finally have some time to sit down and write about what’s happened the past week. I didn’t get to it last time, so I’ll talk about the long plane ride as well as the arrival.
HK Airport Gate 8
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