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Badminton and Airports

I had an incredibly busy and hectic day yesterday. It started at 9AM with an apointment to take care of some things in Shanghai that went on for four hours. By time time my apointment was done, I was starving and grabbed lunch at the hotel. A couple of us from work met up at the office and made our way over to the Shanghai Normal School (University) where our team members had rented some badminton courts. The grounds of the school were quite nice, spacious and tree lined. We played for about two hours in what was a dedicated gym just for badminton, with something like 10 or 15 courts inside. By the end of it (okay, within a few minutes) I was sweating buckets and running around panting. It turns out that I’m not terrible — I’m far from good, but at least I can play. It was hilarous to see people play for like half an hour, then take a break to smoke, then get back to playing. I’ll never understand that.

After the maraton session of badminton, we went to dinner at some place near the University and then Johnny and I split ways with the team. I went back to my hotel, took a shower, and Johnny came and picked me and we headed to the airport to pick up Andres and Brian. After getting them back to their hotel near Hongqiao, we went and got some dinner at a little place near their hotel; both Brian and I had some noodles (16 RMB or $2 USD for a huge plate) while Andres tried to order a cafe con leche in Spanish without much luck until Johnny translated. Satisfied, we went to a massage place for foot and back massages that lasted two hours (we were there until about 2AM) and split ways and I headed back to my hotel. I’ll have to post at some point about how amazing the Chinese massage places are, they’re something out of this world.