Full Body Massage

Orientation week is halfway through and I'm learning more about Shanghai every day. I've been trying various street cart foods near my apartment- there is a whole street of them selling everything from bao zi (buns with meat or veggies) to you tiao (a kind of donut without the icing). This morning, I tried a bakery called 85 which had french chinese fusion pastries. It was delish. I've always been an iced coffee person but now that I'm in China, I've been experimenting with different teas. This morning's was a Pudding Milk Tea. When ordering, I kind of forgot how to say it in Chinese so there were some blank stares on the cashier's part. Oops.

We had three guest spearkers at ECNU, a teacher, police officer, and doctor. I learned not to touch any cute cuddly pets on the streets because chances are, they have rabies. Rabies is the #2 killer in China and quite commonly present even in household pets. The vaccine is worse than getting rabies itself, and in the off chance you are bitten, you'll need to be flown to Hong Kong or Singapore because there's no medical help on the mainland. I was thinking of checking out Shanghai's "live animal market" but now ... maybe that's not such a good idea.

In the afternoon, my group split off for our activities. There's two groups A and B and they split the activties so that yesterday one group did the scavenger hunt (that's my group) while the other did actvities and today it's vice versa. I signed up for the traditional Chinese massage. It was quite an experience.

We drove in a non air-conditioned van for half an hour to get to the massage shop. It was unbearably hot. BUT the massage itself was insanely intense good. I was in a room with three other guys in the program but I was the only one who could speak any mandarin so it was a little hard. Two were chinese and spoke cantonese, and one was white, my friend Connor. We started off with a one hour foot massage and then a full body massage for the second hour. One of the massage girls found Connor fascinating. Notably, his height, super hairy legs, long eyelashes and "beautiful" eyebrows. It was hilarious. She even asked for his phone number so they could chat.

The massage itself had some strange moments. At one point, our legs were stretched towards our heads and our bones cracked. (Connor couldn't lift his leg more than half a foot off the bed- the massage girl also found this hilarious). There was also some butt massaging going on. Strange moments. Nonetheless, I will definitely be getting more massages in China. They are so cheap! (about 10 dollars for 2 hrs)