Shanghai Stress

I am writing this from a hostel in Beijing, having finally left Qingdao.

So exams were finished on Monday and Tuesday. At the time I thought I had done badly but it turns out that I had still done rather well, beating most of the Koreans. Which is interesting as they nearly all had books open under the desks. "They cheat worse than Italians" according to Laura. In one exam the two behind me saw that I hadn't circled some answers for the listening and prodded me on the back. I turned around and they waved the answers at me. I looked back to the front, not wanting to cheat, and they prodded me again. I asked how they knew the answers were correct and they pointed to their book under the table before prodding me again. By this point I had seen the answers and figured there was no point not writing them down and as I couldn't forget them, just wrote them down.

The teacher was oblivious to all this. I suspect cheating is normal in Chinese universities. Great educational system they have here...

Then I had the most stressful day of my life. This involved getting up early at 5, and thus waking up stressing that I'd overslept at 3,3:30, 4 and 4:30. Then down to find the bus to the airport which meant stressing that it would be late. It left at 6 and my flight was 7:45. Then it stopped at some hotel for a stressfully long time which caused me to get out and stare at the driver who was having a cigarette. I think he got the message and we headed off.

Landed in Shanghai. Stressed about finding the Russian Embassy. Walked there in 38 degree heat. Applied for Russian visa which involved stressing about whether they'd accept my unoriginal invitation letter and that the form wasn't entirely conscientiously filled out (I filled it out in the embassy thinking I'd know all the information. As it turned out they needed previous contacts for universities and work, travel insurance numbers, hotel addresses and shoe size). I managed to write something in each box (mostly by pretending I've never worked) and after queueing for ages to pay, my application was accepted sweet halleluia. However just when it was going my way, it turned out they didn't work on Thursdays so by next day delivery they meant 2 days. This meant I then had to buy new flights for Friday evening not Thursday. This cost a lot of money. The one consolation was that when I rang up ctrip to change my flights they answered with a cheery "hello Miss Jones" and proceeded to be very helpful. I am always in awe of how they know it's me  straightaway when I ring.

Then to check in at hostel. Accidentally booked different hostel to one I thought. Went to wrong hostel. Went to right hostel.

In China you have to show your passport when you check in. Mine was in the Russian Embassy. I had photocopied the passport page but not the visa page.

Went to police station to get a waiver to stay in hostel. Policeman was very rude and aggressive.

Went back to hostel. Ate. Hurried to airport to meet Sara. Got off wrong stop on subway for the maglev so had to go back. Was now late.

Got on maglev. Sometimes 430kmh isn't fast enough and I sprinted through the airport to the arrivals 30 minutes late. Worried Sara had arrived and wandered off.

Instead waited another hour as Sara spent ages in immigration queue.

So after lots of taxi fares, lots of sweating and lots of hurrying, I had more or less accomplished my main goal of getting a russian visa. Sara and I relaxed at dinner in an art deco restaurant that was very Old Shanghai. I say relaxed, more went from a tightly wound spiky ball of sweating stress to a mere frazzled frizz of still sweating stress.