Sunday Pilgrimage.

Anton, Mike and I decided to go to church. Vince gave us the directions last night to Xujiuhui Cathedral. We had to walk around 400m to get to the station then use to lines to reach Xujiuhui. The cathedral has a similar architecture to St. Augustine Church in CDO. We arrived around 11:20. We started travelling at around 9:40. So it was really a long way. When we arrived, the mass was finished. Their schedule was 6am,7:30am,10am and 6pm. We decided to stay and pray for a while. An old lady approached us and began asking questions and where we were from. She was one of the church caretakers. She began preaching about Jesus and how he died on the cross. We somehow understand some parts of it. It was nice to hear and also amazing to see that there is a church in China with quite a large congregation. After our short stop, we headed to McDo for lunch then toured the area. There were a number of high end malls that were quite big. It was raining from time to time so we had no choice but to stay inside the malls. After, we headed to IKEA. I think it's the biggest home furnishing store here. It's warehouse type and quite similar to Handyman Do-It centers. They had great choices and affordable prices. Vince recommended their meatballs but we didn't try it since we wanted to go home and rest our legs! On the walk back from the station to our dorm, we saw Jeff and Cat helping out Justin (Jeff's flatmate) buy a bike. Finally we got home and rested.

We then headed to the student life center to eat dinner at the same place where we over ordered dumplings before. This time, we were more careful and Edel,Dexter, Justin and Jeff were present so there were ten of us to finish all the food.

Tomorrow is the start of registration so it will be quite a busy day for us.

I guess it's nice that we have to go so far to hear God's Word. It makes the mass more hard-earned for us. We get the feeling that we really made an effort to go to church. It also made us thankful of the fact that the Gesu was so near from the dorm and a bit sad that we sometimes disregard the fact that God is so near us in our country yet we don't make much out of our blessing. Even the caretaker attested to the faith of Filipinos. It was really a tiring journey but we learned important values and more chinese words!

The Weekend.

We started our weekend in the basketball court. Again, we woke up early to play and exercise. We were joined by chinese locals and learned another interesting fact. In the Philippines,we usually give a second shot to someone who shoots but here they don't. Wala nang balik. They also don't shake hands after a game. During the afternoon when we played again in a different area. Some of them are even stunned at what we're doing. They don't even say thank you to someone who gets the ball when it reaches other courts or outside our playing area.

We had lunch in Yoshinoya. Fastfoods are really quite expensive here especially those that have branches all over the world. At night, we headed to the city with the help of Vince. He brought us to Charmant. It was a restaurant with amazing desserts and dishes. Despite the fact that it was pretty expensive, the food was really great. Afterwards, we headed to the Bund. It's the one you can see in the Multiply skyline default theme. It's quite similar to the Avenue of Stars in HK. A really nice place with a number of vendors offering cool items and delicious street food.
I'll right about today later on after dinner time. Here's a not so good pic of "the skyline".

Nightmare Before Christmas!!!

It was raining all day here in Shanghai and really cold. We woke up early to play basketball in one of the courts in campus. just to take a few shots. It was drizzling from time to time. We headed home after about 30 minutes. We also paid our dorm fees and had our first laundry. Actually, just me and Anton. It was quite expensive. We're not sure if we got ripped off or it was the regular price. Hopefully we can learn to bargain after a few days here. We also got to eat at the cafeteria in the school. We ate the same thing since the other stores only accepted cards which we didn't have. Luckily, there was one that accepted cash. Our vocabulary is slowly improving already. I got to order an Oreo Blizzard in Dairy Queen using the right chinese words for it. We also saw a Nightmare Before Christmas store. I'm sure a lot of NBC fans would love this. It was quite pricey though but the stuff were quite alright. Here's two pics inside the store.

Biking, Basketball and Dumplings

We played basketball at the school just right in front of our dorm. Chinese locals invited us to play. They have quite different rules like winner's out. It was fun and a great way to learn new words. After three games,we headed to our Fudan tour. We tried to search for the other basketball courts. There are two separate playgrounds but when we visited around 4pm, there were still students doing their CAT/ROTC and we met a guy wh said that they don't end until six. We decided to go around and check the area before heading back home for a short rest. Then came dinner time. We tried the student life center of Fudan which is about a 8-10 minute bike ride from our dorm. We ate at this restaurant and over ordered dumplings!!! It was so cheap, going for around 7 pesos per piece. But the bottomline is,we over ordered. There were probably 40 plus pieces of it for 6 of us. It was certainly a cheap meal (Philippine standard). Afterwards, we biked around campus again to check out the basketball courts and despite the fact that their were no lights, people were still playing. Even girls were playing. It's really quite amazing how China has became a basketball country. Anyway,that's it for now.

We are in Shanghai!!!

We landed yesterday via PR 336 from Manila. A guy named Vincent helped us all the way. He studied in Fudan last sem and came back for another sem. He guided us around town and gave us tips on how to go around. We got local SIM cards last night and today we bought bikes!!! It's so nice to bike around the city since everyone is doing it and it's relatively safe. Later, we are playing basketball.