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Shopping Trip!!!

China day in the life exploring 厦门 Friends NSLI-Y 厦门 Today was titled "mingle day" so they forced us, instead of encouraged us, to sit with the locals at lunch and dinner. Besides that today was a normal day, besides our weekly buddy activity. Last week we did a scavenger hunt to get to the know the campus. They gave us photos of locations around campus and our assignment was to find the places and take an identical picture as the ones we were given. But today was different. First we played the human knot game and then another group activity. It reminded me of musical chairs without the chairs. The loser had to go up on and do something embarrassing. I wouldn't have lost except Sydney pushed me out of the spot so I had to go up on stage with Merrick and do a Chinese folk dance we had learned in interest group. It was probably hilarious to watch.

Anyways on to the important stuff. After the buddy activity they announced the winner of this week's "strive for excellence". And the winner goes to..... Team 5. Wait what? You must be confused right now since the title of this post is "shopping trip" with 3 exclamation points. That's right, we didn't win. Team 5 did. After I heard we didn't win I tuned out until I heard the words, "Team 4 will also go shopping". Apparently within the time I wasn't listening, 杨老师, my favorite person, said that we only lost by 2 points and I earned the highest amount of points the entire week so she was awarding us even though we technically didn't win.

Outdoor shopping mall

Shopping was so much fun. We road a public bus for 1 元 which is about 15 cents in America. It was pretty crowded so we all stood up. After 4 stops we got off at a giant shopping center. They gave us 1 hour to shop inside and then we had to meet back up with our chaperones at a Starbucks. During that hour Sydney and I scooped out the entire mall before we bought anything; therefore, we would know which stores had the cheapest/ best stuff. We ended up buying everything from a store named "Mango". We each got shorts, the same pair of shorts, for 100 元 which is about 15 US dollars. I also got a shirt for 70 元. After one hour we met up at Starbucks, which on a unrelated notes is really expensive in China. We all traveled as a group to the outdoor shopping center that was down the street. There I bought another shirt for 60 元. We all walked around for another hour and looked inside some local shops. There were a few pearl stores that we digging out pearls from real oysters on the street!!!

Getting pearls

Me and Sydney happy cuz we went shopping!!!

On that way back to 厦门大学 we saw the ocean and actually touched the sand. It was a pretty small beach but it was beautiful (because it was dark and we couldn't see how polluted the ocean was). But once we got back the real drama happened. They gave us no curfew (just had to stay in the building) as a reward. Sydney and I chatted with some people for about an hour but around 11:15 we saw a cockroach!!! It was so gross but I'm pound to say I stayed cool, for the most part. Sydney, on the other hand, was freaking out. I quickly ran out of the room to find Jackson because he is known for killing bugs quickly and quietly, but I couldn't find him anywhere!! So I ran down the hall and asked Riley to help catch and kill the bug. First Sam came to try to help but he soon proved to be useless so Riley came. More and more people trickled in wanted to know what was going on. We picked up the bugs and scared the poor thing out into the open. They covered it with a trash can. Some genius had the bright idea that use paper as a lid but they somehow forgot about gravity. Since the paper wasn't sturdy enough the bug was able to jump out back into our room. But before that happened the guys, being typically guys, shoved the trashcan into our faces to freak us out. This is when someone, I don't even know who because their was so many people in the room wanted to watch, hit the table and knocked out our glass water bottle. It shattered all over the floor. Riley, not being very bright, didn't even realized he had dropped the bug and proceeded to carry out the EMPTY trashcan like a hero. It took 3 people to tell him that the bug was still in the room. At that point the room was packed with at least 10 people who were screaming, not aware that other people were sleeping right next door. At that point I knew 杨老师 heard all the noise from her room downstairs so while the guys handled the bug killing, I went downstairs to tell the chaperones what was going on. They came back upstairs with me to check if everything was okay. By the time I returned the cockroach was smashed on the ground. We cleaned it up as well as the glass. But Sydney was so scared still that we ended up sleeping in 杨老师 bed and she slept in ours. We went to sleep around 2:00am and woke up the next day super tired.

(Sorry no pictures of the cockroach, next time maybe haha)

I think yesterday (07/15) was the most exciting day yet.