After Guilin, I didn’t think I would miss Shanghai so much. Chengdu wasn’t a good experience, partly because of luck, partly because of our poor planning. We should have never went on a tour, since we knew it had a pretty good chance of being terrible. But alas, we did and at the very least, we have a great story to tell.
Anyways, we got to sleep in a little before we headed out to the airport. Luckily for us, we were able to hire a van for the same price that two cabs would have cost, which was nice. The whole group stayed together and it was convenient for all our luggage. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport because we knew how bad traffic could get in Chengdu. To our surprise, traffic didn’t slow us down one bit and we got there early. Actually, we got there so early, the guy at the check-in counter wouldn’t let us check-in!
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Today was the last official day of orientation. I spent the morning at ECNU picking up textbooks. For lunch, I finally tasted China’s KFC. It was pretty good and it was much cheaper than its American equivalent (~24 RMB, which comes out to ~$4). However, compared to other options around the area, it seems really expensive. I probably won’t eat there again, but I just had to try it. They did have a nice fruit drink though.
I didn’t do much for the rest of the day, but later that night, NYU brought us to a Chinese acrobatic show. It was amazing. Very entertaining, especially the “Titanic” one, where a pair of acrobats were swinging around on this long piece of cloth. At one point, they swung within a few feet of me. Unfortunately, with my camera out of commission, I didn’t get to take any pictures. The lighting was perfect and I might have gotten some incredible shots.
One last thing. I did find it amusing that the most cheered act was the motorcycle death wheel, the least Chinese of all the acts. The wonders of life or death situations.