9/1

Another free day. Woke up about 8:00, went and got breakfast (I haven’t eaten so much breakfast since high school). Everyone just relaxed and did their own thing. Most walked around new parts of Shanghai (there’s so much to be seen it’s ridiculous). I came back after Edwin, Drew and I had lunch and worked on my documentary. It’s going well but it’s very time consuming. Edwin helped me translate everything, now I have to edit and add subtitles and such.
We leave tonight at 10:10 on a 12 hour train ride to Shandong University of Art and Design in Jinan, Shandong, China. We went out to a very nice vegetarian restaurant (very rare in China). Lots of the dishes were good, some nasty (at least to me). They had every kind of fake meat you can think up. Most of our projects were presented after dinner. I got a little though mine but still have a couple more hours to complete.
We were running a little late when our vans arrived to take us to the station. Our drivers tried to haggle with us for a higher price cause they knew were in a hurry. Ying staid strong and fixed it up. Our driver still persisted though, he was a real smart ass, weirdo. He made smart remarks to Edwin a whole bunch, and probably to us but we didn’t understand. He kept feeling Drew up in the passenger seat although we believe he was comparing Drew’s slight plumpness to his almost bare bones.
We made it to the train and got to our “suites”. We were in rooms of four and it was pretty much just bunk beds, very close together. It was fine, especially compared to the tickets priced lower than ours. They were all crammed into beds in the other cars.
For some reason being on the train gave us a second wind and some of the group got really hyper which was fun. The train ride was fun and fairly quick. We fell asleep (well, those that could get comfortable enough) some time around midnight.