Days 291-292: Totally Free Days--Packing, Kiwiana, Museum, Dinner with Faculty

Thursday we did a lot of packing: we packed up our silver bag (that we bought here) with gifts for others. We thought we'd have room for other things too, but we quickly realized that we didn't.  So...that bag is going to have to be our "gift bag," and then later on we had to make a trip to Hongkou Plaza. We decided to have dinner there and opted for Kiwiana; we hadn't been there since Valentine's Day. Today, it was not crowded at all. I was curious to try their steak, so Kerry and I ordered both their fish (which we both loved) and their steak for two (which Kerry, especially, wasn't crazy about...and I didn't like that they didn't give us a steak knife). I tried to show the waiter the translation for "rare steak" that Kerry came up with on Google, but he clearly didn't get it. The next thing I knew, he was handing me a phone. A man who said he was the manager asked if "everything was okay." 'I told him that I wanted a rare steak. The manager, who spoke perfect English, must have conveyed this to the waiter, because my steak was rare. Yay! For dessert, I had their ice cream buns (which were multi-colored buns with different ice cream flavors in each. SO GOOD. Kerry's dessert was puff pastries with strawberry jam: they looked like eclairs. It was a pricey meal, but I thought it was quite good. Kerry had a lesser opinion. Afterwards, we went to Carrefour and got another suitcase, and a container for some smaller items, like the dried flowers some students gave me. That also was pricey, but we did need another suitcase. When we got home...around 10 pm...we packed the new suitcase full: 22.6 kilograms, which is pretty much the limit.

Engrish poem from Sugar Report, Hongkou Plaza....

Kiwiana's fish!

Amazing ice cream buns, Kiwiana!

Friday-one last visit to the Shanghai Museum. The line wasn't too bad even though we got there around 10:00 am; we only had to wait five minutes to get in. This time we check out the Painting Gallery....beautiful ancient paintings all over! It took us an hour to go through. And that was enough; the weather was bad--lots of rain when we left. Later on, I went to dinner with some of the faculty: I shared a cab ride to Pizza Taxi with Peter and Richard. Peter is feeling very down about the whole housing situation. And when we met Kizito there, he voiced a lot of complaints about it as well. I feel exceptionally sorry for him: he has three kids and a wife who was coming in September, so he was thrown for quite a loop. Tomasz, the Polish faculty, also joined us. Kizito and I split a pizza, Richard had a burger, Peter had soup and a veggie pizza on his own, and Tomasz had a salad. We also had some wine and some liqeur shots (except for Tomasz). It was really fun to socialize with them; I think they had a lot to get off their chest about being evicted from Hua Hong Yuan. What horrible timing! Kerry and I empathize so much with all of them...but there's not a lot we can do.  In the evening, when I got home, I talked to both Mark and Nathalie on the phone. It was wonderful to talk to them both, especially Nathalie, whom I hadn't spoken with in a long time. Connecting with dear friends is a wonderful thing.

Pics from the museum and dinner--

Fascinating detail in ancient Chinese painting.

Another detailed painting.

Nature scene.

Another gorgeous nature depiction.

Love the colors in this one.

I love tigers.

This one was also on a pretty postcard sold at the museum store.

Bees and monkeys--detail. Art would like this one.

(left to right) Peter, Richard, Tomasz.

Kizito!

Day 290: Songjiang.....the Final Goodbyes

Today was a hard day, but it was a good day, too. I said a lot of goodbyes to students and handed in my final grades.

It was a hot day--I got on the 11:30 am bus--and I happened to run into both Raymond and Boris.  It was nice to have people to talk to!  As Raymond says, it always makes the bus ride shorter. We promised each other that we'd get together before I left; I hope this comes to pass. The bus stopped right in front of the School of English Studies, and Leona, one of my grad students, was waiting there by the Shakespeare statue.

So first I had lunch with several of my graduate students from the gender studies reading group (Cora, Leona, Katniss, Charmian, and Yiming) at a place called Lesvila off-campus. They have a lot of really good Western food, including a great pizza. We ordered a beef supreme pizza, a fried platter (with chicken wings and pork rinds and fries), a chef's salad, and some spaghetti. I also got a lemon coke. The best part was an amazing ice cream dessert! It was cool, because we shared everything: only 250 RMB for six people, which is only about $6 per person.  I think that the Chinese "sharing" method actually enables people to save money. We chatted a lot about America and China. I gave the girls some gifts: fans, pens, cards. And I gave Cora a special gift, a scarf, for starting the gender studies group. We walked back to the School of English Studies in the 96 degree heat; I kept running into other students on my way to the main office, including Hannah, from my Short Novels class, who gave me a gift!  All of the students I ran into, like Rebecca, a grad student who couldn't make it to the lunch, were friendly and said "hi" to me. Fortunately, the office where I handed in the grades was much cooler. I submitted my grades to Maggie and left the building. Most of the girls left, but Cora followed me to the Admin building, where I needed to submit my grades to the Honors College. I thanked her for all her hard work and hugged her goodbye. I think I will miss Cora most of all, to paraphrase Dorothy. She was such a hard worker and the one who initiated the idea for the gender studies reading group.

In the Honors office, one of the secretaries was there (not Katherina). She did have the money to reimburse me for the cab ride from last week, and I submitted my grades. She said I could take a rest in the office, so I did--they had good Internet in there. I left the office at 5 pm and hung out in the Honors lounge on a yellow couch. I was tired and hot--I'd been sweating all day. Around 5:30, I ventured over to the SISU canteen and met up with Lola, one of my Honors students, who took me to the restaurant where we had dinner. A lot of students there: 11 from my current class and 2 from last ssemester! Plus me, there were 14 total. The students were already ravenous and eating when I got there. They asked me to order more food, so I ordered some spring rolls, mushrooms, and peanuts. I can't say I liked all the food: some of it, like the fish, was way too spicy for me. However, I loved the fried steak, the mushrooms, the peanuts, the eggplant...and the watermelon at the end!  Mostly Laura (who's very chatty) and Siqi (from last term) talked to me; the other students were pretty quiet. Laura and Siqi asked me a lot of questions, mostly about the USA, and I answered them. The students also applauded when I told them that I was invited back to teach in the summer next year. So that was cool. Before we all departed, they gave me an amazing gift: postcards, where each of them had written an individual message to me, telling me how much they liked me and/or my class. THIS IS PROBABLY THE BEST STUDENT GIFT I'VE EVER RECEIVED. Personal, irreplaceable. Christy, one of the students, even wrote me a letter--wow! Alison also got me a photo book, cookies (that tasted more like onion crackers, and tea. I was overwhelmed. I barely made the 8:40 bus going home (5 minutes to spare), but I did. I gave Laura and Cathy hugs goodbye and then boarded. I told them to study hard but to have some fun, too.

On the way home, I read over the students' letters as well as I could sitting in the dark (the driver turned the lights off). There were only about 7 people on the bus. Got off the bus, walked to Chifeng station. Fortunately, there was a 745 pulling up right when I got there. The driver went fast going home--about a 12-minute ride, but I got home about 10:22 pm.  Kerry was already there, home from his gaming. We talked about our days, and I ate some leftover food: I went to bed soon after.

Photos of the day....

(left to right) Leona, Cora, Katniss, Charmian, me, Yiming.

(left to right) Vivian, Cynthia, Jessica, Amy. Eating watermelon!

Gifts from students! The T-shirts are from Cora; the one in the wrapping is from Hannah (it was a cute turtle).

Days 288-289: Grading the American Literature Exams

So these two days have been quite busy: I've been grading the American Literature exams. I managed to finish them in two days. They went much more quickly than the Short Novel exams, partly because they are Honors students and can write better, and partly because there wasn't the same amount of plagiarism going on. The students did a better job of writing with evidence. The overall Final Exam average was an 88.79, which is far better than the average of the Short Novel class: 7 As, 6 Bs, and 1 D. Even the "cheating" girl I referred to in my earlier entry got a B.  I really don't have any way of proving she was cheating, and at this point it's hard for me to care.

Monday got off to an interesting start: we went and had breakfast with Richard at a Howard Johnson's, which was actually quite swank for a Howard Johnson's. However, their "breakfast buffet" was just mediocre: the usual Chinese crap, mostly, like fried eggs instead of scrambled, noodles, yogurt to drink not spoon, etc. There were a lot of fruit flies around the buffet which the manager kept trying to sap with a bug zapper. Charming. However, when I dropped a dessert on the floor, they all just stood around and no one bothered to clean it up. Sometimes I do get annoyed about the lack of cleanliness in China, as you can tell.

Once we got home, we took a bit of a nap, and then I was off on my grading--even though I didn't get started until around 2, I managed to grade questions 1-10.....thank God for having only 12 exams to grade!

Tuesday I woke up early, gave some things to Farris (Iraqi faculty who came over to pick up some stuff, after I advertised our "free giveaway" on WeChat to international faculty), did more grading, ate lunch, took a nap, did more grading, ate dinner (chicken breasts and raw veggies...super healthy!), and then finished the grading up. One student handed in his extra credit paper at the last minute, and it really didn't help him much: he still got the worst grade in the class overall, which is disappointing because he earned a 90 in my class last term.

That's really about it. Life has been dull lately. It was 100 degrees in Shanghai today; for that reason, I stayed in air-conditioned comfort. Tomrrow, I'm going to Songjiang, so I won't be so lucky.

A couple Monday breakfast pics:

Lobby of the Howard Johnson's. Looks swank, but appearances are deceiving.

A manager tries to motivate his staff in the morning, at a Chinese restaurant. Richard said it's not uncommon for them to be outside for this sort of thing.

Days 286-287: Goodbye to Deborah, Grading the Short Novel Exams

Really, I don't have much to say on these two days. Saturday was kind of nice because, even though I was grading exams, I got to have dinner with Deborah, her husband, and her three-year-old daughter Xiao Bei, in the evening. She suggested 5 pm, and I initially thought that was early, but the restaurant--called "Nanjing Impressions," in Hongkou Plaza, was CROWDED. Chinese eat early. In fact, they tend to do everything early.....that's why there are traffic jams at 6:30 am.

The food was good, but they didn't have the Nanjing roast duck we wanted (of course). We did have fish, salted duck, chicken, greens. My favorites were the tender, sweet ribs and the duck dumplings!  Everyone was very nice, and we had a good time. Deborah gave us a couple gifts--notebooks and a vocabulary guide--and Xiao Bei gave us a homemade "thank you" card for the gifts we gave her.  We gave them pens, a Century mug, books and stickers for Xiao Bei, and the Minnesota Bag.

After eating, we went to Carrefour--got some pork and and some bread--and then headed home.

Sunday not much happened other than I finished my Short Novel exams--even entered the grades--and Roopa came over around 2 pm to pick up some hangers and other stuff we are getting rid of. We both like Roopa a lot and wish that we had gotten to know her better here. We talked more about the whole housing controversy. We agree that the worst thing about this situation is that it will break up what little sense of community the SISU International Faculty have: now everyone wants to live in different places. Richard is moving to Songjiang, for example, whereas Roopa wants to stay in the Inetrnational House.  She's not sure if she will be allowed to; she's threatening to leave if they don't let her do so.

Anyway, back to the students: the average score was an 84.24--actually a bit LOWER than the Midterm average (84.32), which was disappointing: I hoped they would do better after having me give them some tips. Still, there were fewer C grades this time, even though there weren't as many As. A key problem overall was the PLAGIARISM...OH MY GOD.  It wasn't always super serious...they would just take little words, phrases, or sentences here and there....but it was prominent.  I didn't feel guilty about lowering their scores because I thought I made it pretty clear that they shouldn't do that. But they did anyway. Sigh.  It's funny: this wasn't a serious problem with the postgrads. Just the undergrads.  Ah well.

Fun with Deborah and her family:

Xiao Bei with one of her stickers.

(left to right) Kerry, me, Deborah, her husband Lei, Xiao Bei

Days 284-285: Lots of Grading, Second Exam

So right now, Thursday-Friday, I'm in the midst of a grading frenzy. Thursday I graded Short Novel exams--I'm actually a bit ahead of myself, as of this writing, which is good. I didn't do much else; I didn't even leave the apartment. So it was a dull day, mostly. The saddest thing about the day is that Samira told us that she has made other arrangements for Mia, the kitty, so we won't be taking her home after all. It's sad. However, Kerry might be able to get her from Samira later, like in August. We don't know at this point. 

Friday--We now officially have 14 days left--two weeks--before we leave China.  I got up relatively early and graded some more. Then I left around 3:30 pm to make the 4:15 pm bus to SISU. Kerry came with me, as he was going gaming. We had a hard time finding a cab--much harder to come by, apparently, than in the morning. I did make the bus okay, but, as soon as I got out of the cab, a dropped a bag and my glasses, of all things, flew off my face and one of the long ear pieces broke off. And, of course, it was pouring rain. I did manage to fix the glasses on my own (temporarily, anyway) and get onto the bus. It was very popular today. Super crowded! A lot of little kids on there, for some reason. And we trudged through the rain....took about 90 minutes.

When I got to SISU, a young woman there gave me my forms and let me eat my snack in the lounge area. I saw a couple of my students in room 129 and asked them what they were during there.  "Oh, the exam is in here."  When I asked the young woman, she confirmed it. "Well, no one told me," I replied, feeling a bit miffed. "Oh, sorry," she said. "Did the students know?" I asked. "Oh, yes,"  she smilingly answered. THAT'S SO CHINA. It would make too much sense, of course, to tell the instructor of the course where the Final Exam is going to be held. And then, when a screw-up happens, don't show any emotions about it but happiness.

So we started the exam. It went pretty smoothly, but I'm pretty sure one student was cheating. Not sure how she did it, but she kept looking down, shaking her ear, moving her lips, and drumming her fingers a lot. I don't know HOW she did it, but I'm pretty sure she was doing it. My guess is that she was typing the questions to a friend who was telling her the answers on an earpiece..something like that. But who knows?  Once the 100 minutes were up (I gave them an extra 10 minutes), I said goodbye and said that I hoped to see them Wednesday: a goodbye dinner!

Anyway....still pouring rain when we got done. Christy, one of my students, ordered a cab for me. Long ride. 208 RMB for the cab...plus he asked for another 20 RMB for....whatever. That also happened when I went from Songjiang to the airport last time...maybe it's a Songjiang fee of some sort?  There are STILL things about this country that I don't understand.  And probably never will.

Songjiang pics...........

Honors College lounge, outside classrooms.

Me with my Honors American Lit. class, before the Final Exam.

Students taking their final. In front you see the Short Novel exams I'm grading.

Day 283: First Final Exam, Lunch with Christa, and Plenty of Rain

Today, mercifully, was the last day that I had to get up at 5:30 am to catch the 7:15 bus at SISU: usual morning routine of eggs for breakfast, cab, and hop on shuttle bus. But oh was it rainy today! The rain just poured down, and all I had to protect me was a little black umbrella with gold leaves on it that Kerry bought at Chifeng Station. Therefore, it took quite awhile to get to school. I hung out in my office reading Hilary Clinton's book What Happened before it was exam time.

I got to the room a bit early; before I got there, I ran into two of my grad students, Katniss and Charmian, who gave me more presents!  I received a paper cut out, embroidered coasters, a notebook, and some bookmarks. I was very grateful. Carol arrived in the classroom and administered the exam to the students. They also had to sign off on a form. She presented me with lots of paperwork that needs to be filled out along with the exams that need to be handed in; it's more like the Honors College. I didn't have to do this last term in English Studies, so this is new to me. And, of course, extra work, like a "self-assessment" of my Final Exam (???!!). Ashley and Sway stayed after and chatted with me a bit; Ashley also gave me some kitty coasters. "They mean crazy cat," she said. I thanked both of them for spending time with me this term. Then I got ready to go.

The bus, as usual, was quite crowded; I saw Alex and said hi, but we didn't chat. I had stuff next to me; besides, I was hungry and even a bit tired. I ate a ham sandwich and grapes on the bus. The bus ride home was MUCH longer than usual. Initially, I told Christa and Kerry to meet me at Ciao Cafe at 1:30, but I didn't get there until 2:00 pm because the bus was so late. Rain ALWAYS equals a traffic slowdown in Shanghai.

At the cafe, I had a tuna panini, Kerry had pizza, and Christa had a lemon tea and a brownie. (She had eaten lunch.) We chatted about the kitty situation, and the situation I'm considering with my Honors student who earned a low final exam grade; I'm not sure what to do with him, so I asked them for some advice.

Christa and I decided to take a cab home, due to the weather, but the cab driver had a heckuva time finding us...finally, it worked out. And he did take us right to the door, so that was good.

In the evening, I graded the first three exam questions, suprassing my goal to get two done!  Yay! I had some leftover spaghetti after Kerry got home from gaming.

Some pics of the day:

My Short Novel undergrads, right before their final (most of them, anyway....some hadn't arrived yet).

Short Novels, undergrad final.

More gifts from students!  The brown coasters are from Ashley; the others from Katniss and Charmian.

Day 282: Lunch, Interview, and Some Bad News

We had lunch at 11 am today with Carol, Professor Wang Xin, and Professor Li Mei. The latter two are assistant deans in the School of English Studies. We gave Wang Xin and Li Mei fruit from ePer market as a gift and Carol a bag of sundries, mostly Century-related: a t-shirt, a mug, a pen, but also a panda paper cutting that we bought in Tongli. The lunch was great: it was one of those huge buffets with fish, pork, beef, greens, dates, and fruit, among other things. We ate in the SISU Guest House under a beautiful chandelier. I talked a lot about my teaching experiences during the year and how much I loved the students. They told me that I was quite popular...and they invited me back! This time, they even said something more concrete: they want me to come back in May or June, and we talked about having me teach postgraduate students American Literature. How great would that be! We chatted for about two hours--the time went fast. We ended things with a picture. Kerry then went on to Carrefour and I went to my interview with Grace.

Originally, I was told that the interview would take an hour: I ended up staying there three. It was okay, though: I had a lot to say. She asked me a lot of questions about my impressions of China before I got here, my cultural experiences, my feelings about leaving, etc. It was quite a review, with lots of questions. We had a good chat, though, which was nice because I haven't been able to talk much with Grace this term. She is pregnant and is keeping a low profile. She expressed an interest in getting together with me before I leave; I hope we can make it happen. Before I left, she gave me a "certificate of apprecation" for my contributions to SISU!  Kind of nice!

However, when I got home, Kerry told me some bad news: he doubts that we will be able to take Mia, the new kitty, home with us after all. It turns out that she was supposed to get her rabies shot in a vet office approved by the PRC and have it stamped in a "red book."  Samira did not have this done, and Kerry didn't know about it, so now all the plans are in a state of chaos. We're not sure what to do and Kerry is very upset. He is making phone calls, contacting people, etc....we will see what happens. We're looking at different options at this point.  We may even just try to bring the cat in anyway and maybe they will accept her. Who knows?

Lunch pics:

Tasty food! Also, Professor Li Mei (left), Professor Wang Xin (right).

(left to right) Carol, Professor Li Mei, Kerry, me, Professor Wang Xin.

Opulent room in which lunch was held.

Days 280-281: Shanghai Pride BBQ...and the Grading Begins

Sunday Kerry and I went to our second Shanghai Pride event, a Pride BBQ. But first I graded some response papers for American Lit. before we left. We took a cab to Cotton's on Xin Hua Road, where we had never been. However, Lucca 390 was in the area, which reminded us of the drag show that we saw months ago. We recognized the venue right away...there was a huge rainbow flag outside. As soon as we came in, there was drama. They had no record of our registration and it seemed they weren't going to let us in for awhile. Fortunately, we ran into Charlene, whom we met last week. She seemed to vouch for us. Apparently, since Kerry paid by credit card, it ran through as a USD PayPal charge...and they couldn't keep track of this. I ran into an Indian guy who said he recognized me from Shanghai University. That was odd...a bit awkward. We then waited in line for some food. I had to point out which food I wanted, and they didn't give us very big portions. However, the food we got was tasty: lamb, grilled vegetables, rare roast beef (although Kerry had a steak). We were entitled to one drink each. We basically ate our food and left soon after; there wasn't really a whole lot to do. It was a crowded venue, people were smoking a lot, and we really didn't know anyone. It was also a very young crowd, with about 90% of the crowd under 30.  However, we did buy some more cheap Pride merchandise. And then we left. We were able to get a taxi pretty quickly. I finished response papers when I got home; we had chicken breasts for dinner. Overall, it was kind of a disappointing Pride event, and a bit of an anti-climactic, depressing day after Friday and Saturday.

Monday was an indoor day. I spent time figuring out "overall performance" for my Short Novel students. Today was also unique in that we placed two ePer Market orders on the same day! We had a lot of groceries that we needed delivered. I also graded the two essay final exams and two final presentations for my American Literature and Culture students. They really didn't do all that great--I'm a bit disappointed. Overall, I think my Honors students did better last term. I'm not sure why. It helped that I had Siqi and Laura last semester, but they didn't take my class this semester. They were my two best Honors students.  Ah well.

Shanghai Pride BBQ photos:

Food from the BBQ: rare roast beef, lamb, veggies, hot dog.

Celebrating 10 years of Pride! That's Charlene in the green.

Me with the Pride flag.

Day 279: Museums with Christa

Today we went to two museums with our new friend from the Netherlands, Christa. Christa moved into our building last November, but we've just gotten to know her better fairly recently. We met up downstairs at 7:20 am and, at Christa's suggestion, headed over to the 108 bus stop, but not the one we normally go to. Apparently, that bus goes all the way to People's Square, where we need to be. A 108 came along right away, and, after Christa confirmed our destination with the driver (who at first didn't seem to want to deal with her), we were on our way. "I think dealing with foreigners stresses them out," she said. It does work both ways... The bus was very crowded but we actually got to the Shanghai Museum VERY quickly. In fact, when we arrived, only four other people were in front of us in line: and the line got fairly big quickly. But we did overestimate the holiday crowd.

At the Shanghai Museum, we first visited their huge ceramics gallery on the 2nd floor. That took an hour...so many amazing treasures! It was two galleries combined of Chinese treasures. With the exception of the sculpture, I think the ceramics galleries are my favorite here. After perusing these, we were sort of hungry. It turns out, though, that they have no restaurant or coffee shop right now. (Last time we came, we were able to go to a coffee shop...strange.)  Kerry and I then headed to a special exhibit of landscapes from the Tate Gallery in London...gorgeous! Christa headed to see some jade. I also noticed that the Calligraphy gallery was open, much to my surprise. Christa told us that, on the website, it said that the bronze, calligraphy, and furniture galleries were all closed. However, when we got there, they were ALL open. (Again...another contradiction between the written truth and actual truth in China.) The calligraphy gallery I managed to get through pretty quickly--it was pretty small--and then we met up with Christa at the Ethnic Minorities gallery. They had costumes from all over China there, such as the Yunnan Province, and some incredible Tibetan masks. I was very impressed by the Tibetan art in general, especially the statues. Once this gallery was done, I wanted to make a stop at the ancient Seal Gallery on the way out. Another small gallery, but interesting: I really liked the seals that were animal-shaped, in particular. So many of them were turtles! We made a brief stop at the gift shop before leaving, and then we were on our way out.

Here are the best museum pictures...I took over 350!!!!

Detail from an ancient pot.

Chinese warrior, Ceramics Gallery

An old pillow, of all things, Ceramics Gallery.

Gorgeous vase.

From the Tate Gallery exhibit.

This was called "The Fall of Pompeii," Tate Gallery exhibit.

Ancient Chinese calligraphy, Calligraphy Exhibit.

Yunnan Province costume, Ethnic Minorities Exhibit

Tibetan mask, Minorities Exhibit.

Tibetan statue, Minorities Exhibit.

Camel seal, Seals Exhibit.

Jade seal, Seals Exhibit.

We walked to the subway--with a brief stop at Mr. Donut--to a place called Joe's Pizza: huge pieces of pizza there, very Western-friendly. They even took my credit card!  I tried a meat-lovers piece, a caprese piece, and a "lotsa cheese" piece: I think the cheese one was my favorite. We noticed a bunch of American frat boys come in at one point; I felt like I was back in college for awhile. Once we had lunch, Christa wanted to have some coffee, so we went to Starbucks and hung out for a bit. It was nice to relax for awhile.  We were already tired--it was about 2:30 pm by this point--so we decided to take a cab to the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, our second museum of the day.

Here's a cute picture Christa took of us being silly--on a wall of flowers--while waiting for the cab:

The Urban Planning Exhibition Hall consisted of five floors. Well, six really. There's an entrance floor that you walk into with a couple gift shops, a map of Shanghai on the floor, and a gorgeous gold statue of the Pudong area with the Oriental Pearl Tower. The next level up is the "Main Floor," which goes into some of the history of Shanghai: the visual photographic comparisons of Shanghai today with Shanghai even twenty years ago were particularly interesting to me. The second floor goes deeper into the history, talking about some of the specific areas of Shanghai and how they have changed. However, my favorite had to have been the third floor, with a real-life diorama of present-day Shanghai. You could walk all around it, looking for different areas of the city. Extraordinary! The fourth floor was cool: it was more about the future plans for Shanghai, into 2035 and 2050. The predictions were positive and bold. Perhaps I'm a bit jaded, but I'm wondering if they can really make it all come true, particularly the glowing environmental ones. There was a trivia game to play, and a place to leave messages. The last thing we saw on this floor was a cute animated video about how Shanghai is friendly to foreigners and serves as a "WORLD PARTY!"  I'm not sure that's how I'd describe Shanghai. It's fun, but "world party"?  Not yet. The top floor was a beautiful sightseeing deck with some nice watercolors on the walls; we stopped and had ice cream. They were really rushing us out at this point; there were announcements every five minutes about how it was time to go, and it was 4:45 pm and the museum closed at 5. We went back downstairs and noticed the gift areas were closed. I looked over at a couple women, and one motioned us outside. It's clear they were trying to get everyone out.

Best of the Urban Planning Exhibition Center:

Pudong Diorama on ground floor.

Pudong today vs. 20 years ago. What a contrast!

Yu Gardens diorama.

Shanghai diorama, 3rd floor--amazing!

Here's the area near where we live.

Messages of gratitude from us.

A view of the Shanghai diorama, 4th floor.

City view from the 5th floor.

The Shanghai Expo Mascot, outside the center.

Christa ordered a car for us; we were really exhausted by this point.. I went to bed as soon as I got home and napped a couple hours. Once I awake, I graded the rest of my response papers.  And that was pretty much it. A full but interesting day with a new friend.