After lunch, we received our "Certificate of Completion" for finishing our studies at the university. The certificate looked nice except for the fact that it had our picture from our SJTU ID cards, which I didn't look very nice in, so as a word of advice, when the professors take you to make your SJTU ID cards in the beginning of the program, make sure you look nice. We took group pictures and pictures with our tutors on the green in the middle of campus. It was so hot outside, so everyone was hiding under trees and didn't look very happy in pictures, and after pictures, everyone ran back into the hotel.
I definitely had a lot to do today, but the first thing on my "Things to Do" list was to take more pictures of campus. Like mentioned in the earlier post, I realized pretty late into the program that I really hadn't taken an pictures of campus. I kept the beauty of Shanghai Jiao Tong University to myself, so I felt like I needed to take time to share! The first two pictures are of one of the classrooms we used for our classes (we were in a different classroom everyday). The next two pictures are of the main gate of the school. I still remember arriving in Shanghai at night the first day and refusing (to the taxi driver) to go through the gate because it looked more like a Chinese restaurant than an university. However, while here, I've loved walking in and out of this gate and seeing tons of people take pictures in front of this gate. I'm going to miss it; I wish Tech had one! I also have some pictures of the roads around campus (they're so clean!), and I also have three pictures of the school's museum, which is also a widely popular photo taking spot in campus. Our hotel, or 教师活动中心 (AKA Jiàoshī huódòng zhōngxīn / Faculty Club), is right next to the museum, so while walking back to the hotel, I was often stopped by people (who thought I was Chinese) to take pictures of them in front of the building! I'm pretty sure I put the last picture of "SJTU" on my last post, but I took another picture of it today because it was always my favorite part of campus. It acts as the bus station for the campus shuttle bus that goes back-and-forth in between the Minhang campus and the Xujiahui Campus (which is where we were). My roommate and I had planned on visiting the Minhang campus because we heard the food there was cheaper and better, but we never went unfortunately, but on the bright side, it gives us another reason to come back to Shanghai, right? In terms of the bus stop, I always liked seeing people sit on the letters and wait for the bus. Again, it'd be awesome if Tech could have something like this, too!
Also, although I always thought that the "SJTU" bus stop was the prettiest place on campus, my second home on campus was definitely 全家 (AKA quánjiā / Family Mart), so I took a picture of the store two times today! This store was where I got drinks, snacks, meals, and more! I was there so often that one of the employees actually laughed and told me that she saw me in the store everyday. To be completely honest, I didn't buy something everyday, but I did go nearly everyday to either buy something, stroll around, or talk with the employees there. I'm going to miss it a lot, and I hope we have one of these stores close to our hotel in Qingdao.
After taking pictures around campus, I went to the subway station to try to get money out of my transportation card because I had put in too much money a couple weeks ago (that day where I said I mastered the subway station). After struggling to find the area where they offered refunds, I tried to ask about just taking out the money on the card, so I could keep the card as a souvenir, but the man at the window said I wasn't allowed to just take out money, so I gave my card back and got 120 Yuan back (20 Yuan for the card deposit and 100 Yuan for the amount on my card). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a picture of my card before I gave it back, so I just took a picture of my roommate's card because I wanted to find a way to remember our 地铁卡 (AKA dìtiě kǎ / metro card) (although, technically, pictures of the card are probably all over Google).
After getting that errand completed, I headed back to Metro City Mall one last time with my roommate because I wanted to buy Royce chocolate for my aunt in Korea (whose house I'll be staying at this weekend) and because I wanted to buy something from the huge Studio Ghibli store in this mall. I got to the mall first, and while waiting for my roommate, I looked around and took some pictures of the structure of the mall and bazaar market on the basement of the mall.
While walking around on the basement, we saw that a new store! It only sold cheese tarts, and the fact that it only sold cheese tarts made me wonder about how confident this store was in its cheese tarts. We didn't get any, but they definitely looked good.
The store was right across from the store I introduced probably the first week here in Shanghai where I talked about a store that specialized in churro-like bread with cream in the middle. I promised more pictures of the store and the actual name of store, so here it is! We were surprised to see that they had new chocolate flavored ones, but again, we didn't buy any, but like I always say, more reasons to visit Shanghai again in the future!
After buying the chocolate downstairs, we stopped to get drinks where I got this mango smoothie with mango jelly on the top! It was so good (especially for a major mango lover like me), and luckily, I'm pretty sure this store has locations in Korea, too, so I'll make sure to stop by and get the drink again either this weekend or when I go back to Korea after the end of this program.
I bought a 1000-piece puzzle of Spirited Away at the Studio Ghibli store for more than 200 Yuan (or more than 30 USD), which is technically pretty expensive compared to most of the things I've been buying in China, so I had to comfort myself and tell myself it was okay to spend that much on a puzzle. I'm determined to start (and hopefully finish it) as soon as I get home in the States! Before leaving the mall, we stopped at Hershey's World, which is only in big cities around the world, so I felt like I wouldn't be able to see it again for awhile. Also, everything was "Buy 1, Get 1 Free," so we felt the need to definitely look around.
After taking a short break at the hotel and continuing to pack my stuff, I headed to our final banquet in Shanghai. Our professor said the restaurant was known to be expensive in Shanghai, and because it was our final banquet, he also invited our tutors to come and eat, so they did! Everything was really good, and after dinner, I was extremely full. I took two pictures at the beginning of dinner, but once the food all came out, I was busy eating, so I forgot to take pictures. That's how good everything was! The interior also looked very fancy, so he made sure we took many photos around the restaurant. Unfortunately, our professor still has those photos, but if I get access to them, I'll make sure to come back and post them.
After eating dinner, my professor planned to take everyone (including our tutors) to karaoke, but I chose not to go because I wasn't that excited about sharing my tone death singing, and I wanted to pack and go to sleep early, so I came back and continued to pack. I realized that I accumulated tons of stuff over the weeks, and I began to regret the fact that I had brought extra stuff to Shanghai in the first place. After stepping on the stuff in my suitcase and expanding my suitcase, I got the zipper to close, but my suitcase was unreasonably heavy. While packing, I decided to throw away my blue umbrella that I had brought from home because it wouldn't fit in anywhere and because it actually had holes on the top and had bent metal frames. However, because I had used it for a long time, I felt a little sad about throwing it away in a foreign country, so I make sure to take a picture of it before carefully placing it into the trash bin. Although I'm heading for Korea tomorrow, my roommate (who got the correct visa for the program) was planning to travel to Nanjing tomorrow, so we technically were both leaving our rooms (permanently for me; temporarily for my roommate), so we prepared and organized our gifts for our 服务员 , so they could take it the next day after we had already left our rooms.
Shanghai was definitely an awesome city to be able to live in for more than a month as I got to see the modernization of China while I also got to observe the well-preserved traditional side of China. I had the opportunity to improve in my language skills and the opportunity to interact with new friends on this program. I know I'm making it sound like I'm leaving China forever, but leaving Shanghai definitely seems to be an end to a major chapter in my life, and I definitely cannot wait to get to Qingdao.
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