We talkin' bout practice?

As many of you know, I can't survive without frisbee. I've spent the past two months wandering around Southeast Asia and I think that every time there was a frisbee game within 100 miles I was there. Naturally, I did a little research about frisbee here in Suzhou and found that the closest game was in Shanghai on Monday nights. With this goal in mind, Emma and I planned a short visit to the "big city" (Suzhou with its measly population of almost 6 million is considered a podunk town in these parts...) Making it from Suzhou to Shanghai necessitated mastering the Chinese train system. This is no small undertaking. Chinese train stations are bursting at the seams. They are overflowing with humanity. It's like entering a Dropkick Murphies concert in full blast... (Sidenote: why is it that tiny little ladies here have no problem elbowing me out of the way? One day I will get angry and crush one...) Anyways, here's a picture of the train station in Shanghai:


Shanghai was sweet. It was really weird to be in such a cosmopolitan city. At this point, I feel like I've adjusted to being seen as an outsider, but there are lots of Westerners in Shanghai. In fact, we saw more "waiguoren" in 10 minutes in Shanghai than we'd seen all week in Suzhou. Anyways, Shanghai is super-modern and kind of reminded me of NYC except imagine it being twice as big and having a lot more Chinese people... Here's a nice picture of the scenery in Pudong (check out the haze):


Ok, so we stayed with Charlotte (from Swat) in Shanghai and she was an amazing host. She brought us to a bunch of her favorite restaurants (I can still taste that beef soup in my dreams!), taught us lots of Chinese, and was an all-around great guide to the city. Thanks!

I'm obviously writing too much at this point, but I still have to tell you about the highlights from our trip:

1) Frisbee. We played in the Workers' Stadium from 8pm - 10pm in the pouring (acid) rain and had a blast. It was amazing to run around and play frisbee! We also got to meet lots of cool people and make a bunch of new friends :)

2) Buying tickets. Charlotte told us that one of her friends had recently watched an Olympic soccer match at the stadium, so we thought that we'd try to get tickets. We went to the stadium and started chatting with a scalper ("huangniu" in Chinese which translates to "yellow cow" - still waiting to hear why...) Anyways, we were about to buy tickets from the scalper when some other guy runs over grabs the scalper's tickets and drags him off by the collar. The scalper starts fighting back and his girlfriend even joins in and starts defending her boyfriend with her umbrella. It was quite a scene! Within 3 minutes, no less than 50 policemen arrived on the scene (this is not an exaggeration). The police response time and show of force were unprecedented. I can only imagine what happens when there is a protest... Anyways, exciting.


3) Nigeria vs. Belgium. OLYMPIC SOCCER SEMI-FINAL!!!! It was amazing! The seats were good, the soccer was great, and it was flat-out amazing to be at an Olympic event. Nigeria crushed Belgium 4-1 and it was sweet! Jai-yo!

Ok, that's it for now. I hope you're all doing well! Let me know what you think of the blog, what you want to hear more about, etc...

- Jon