Time For Friends

This is going to be just a short update, but  still something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.

Ever since my last exam mid-November, I’ve had more time to have a social life, so I’ve spent the past month spending time with old and new friends.

A couple of impressions here...

At Heidi's place

Pearl's niece Heidi, who is living in Shanghai, visited me on campus around a month ago, and then invited me to have a sleepover at her place the week afterwards, which was really lovely. She cooked for me (it was, unsurprisingly, delicious - everyone in that family can cook!) and took me out for breakfast in the morning.

Dinner with May

One of the absolutely most lovely things that happened in the past few weeks was seeing my friend May from high school again. She is the only one of my former Chinese classmates who I kept in touch with throughout the past six years, and she is studying and working in Beijing now. She came to Shanghai two weeks ago, though, and we had dinner together. It was so amazing to see her again; I can't wait to see her again in Zhengzhou in February!

Unfortunately, she is very camera-shy, so I only have a picture of the meal we shared...

Dinner with Rose and her friends

Last Sunday, I finally met up with Rose again. Rose was my Chinese teacher for five weeks when I lived in Shanghai for a short while in the summer of 2012, and she was in charge of preparing me for an all-Chinese day-to-day life. 

Since she lives and works in Shanghai, it's incredible that it took us so long to find a day that suited us both, but I had dinner with her and some of her friends last weekend, and we're planning to meet up again in the week after Christmas, when Flo is here as well.

Christkindlmarkt in Shanghai

On Friday, I went to the only Christkindlmarkt in Shanghai with some of my German friends. It looks very traditional on this picture, but it's tiny and while they sell some traditional things (such as Christmas tree ornaments, roasted almonds, or Advent wreaths), most of the things don't feel authentic. And don't get me started on the music - only one in three songs had anything to do with Christmas or winter, the rest was a weird mix.
Nevertheless, we had a great time, maybe even more so because of how surreal the entire thing was!