Shanghai - Random

So I'm just going to post a few random things that I've found interesting (or fun, or what have you) here in Shanghai. For the list of things just click below to read more.

1) There are a lot of bikes here in China, not all that surprised and it does get crowded around rush hour, but it isn't all that bad. There is also an overhead highway that travels throughout what appears like all of Shanghai, it certainly does appear to make things easier.

2) Lights go from red, back to yellow, to green again which I think is pretty handy. They also have counters to count down how much time until the light turns red (at least some of the lights do these things, I don't know if all of them do).

3) Inside of our rooms, we have to place our electronic key card into a slit to power on the room. It's a pretty neat way of saving electricity.

4) The Chinese like there fireworks :p They also enjoy all sorts of different color lights which is pretty sweet, I'll hopefully have some pictures of some other buildings to show.

5) Basketball seems to be very popular on campus which surprised me a bit.

6) IKEA is awesome, a few of us went there and they had soft serve ice cream for 1 Kuai (which is like 15 cents). That made my day :)

7) It's impressive that the students that go to ECNU live without heat or hot water and have four to one room the size of mine. However, their tuition is roughly 5,000 Kuai (or so I've heard) which would equate to about $800 (a semester).

8) Bartering for items is fun and interesting although I had someone who really needed to sell something to me and I didn't want the item but they kept dropping the price on it and trying to get it to sell it to me, they were really persistent but I just didn't want it!

9) I've had the chance to play soccer with a bunch of people and I've had a great time. There are people from West Africa, England, Germany and of course here in China among other places as well.

10) Cabs are limited to 4 people (which makes sense, but I don't think there's actually a law for that in NY), I also got chastized by the cab driver for hopping over a 2.5 ft fence to go to the HSBC bank so that I could limit the amount of time my friends in the cab had to wait, he apparently told my friends that I had no culture. Certainly interesting :P

That's it for now, I can't really think of anything else for now.