Shopping, sushi & Qingming Festival travels booked!

Hey hey! 

So, another week in Shanghai has flown by as usual! On Monday, after work, I headed straight downtown for the first meeting, at The Press, of History Society! My friend, who is in the final year of his Chinese History thesis invited me to join the RAS (Royal Asiatic Society) History Study group and help him to run it over the next 4-5 months. It was so fun to meet people from various, mature and professional backgrounds come together for a drink and discussion on how to run the History group. In the end we decided upon two attendees preparing a presentation each month on a chosen Modern History topic. My topic is the Indian-Shanghai relationship 1800-1949. It's so great to be studying History again and quite exciting to prepare a presentation for everyone to watch and hopefully learn from. 

The next day after a lovely (I must say I really enjoyed work last week; all my lessons went smoothly and fun) day at work, in the evening, I met up with a friend who I haven't seen in a while; Tasha, and Dave who I last saw at Christmas. We had dinner at a Chinese, spicy-food restaurant at the Cloud 9 mall in Zhongshan Park. The food was spicy but scrumptious. After dinner we headed to mine to relax, chill and catch up more. It was a lovely evening! I've been getting asked a lot recently in regards to my trip to Sri Lanka and India. How was it? What was the highlight? Whats it like? What did you love the most? Did you feel safe? In all truth and honesty its so hard to put my trip into words. All I know is that it was the most amazing and life-changing experience for me. 

The rest of the week went quite quickly, with lots of Chinese study and travel preparation. Friday arrived quickly. That morning I had my usual Chinese lesson in Xujiahui. After this, I spent a couple of hours at Costa studying Chinese, writing, lesson planning and the like. At 3:30pm I headed to my tutoring class. After tutoring my regular kids for one hour I headed back to home and met Mikaela at the station. She, a fellow Teach English in China friend, had come from Chongming to downtown Shanghai for the weekend. That evening we went out with a bunch of friends and had a fun evening out! 

The next day, after a long lie in, Miakela, Andru and I met my friend Margarita at Hailun Road station for sushi. We went to an AMAZING sushi place. After this we went to the nearby station, Tiantong Road, for shopping! There is a market there called  Qipu. WOW! So many clothes for such cheap prices. In fact there was everything! Shoes, clothes, phone cases and everything else you can imagine! Its safe to say, we shopped until we dropped! The shopping exhausted us, after a quick stop and coffee at East Nanjing Road, we headed home for a chilled evening. I was exhausted but happy with all my new buys! 


Today, I woke up and headed for brunch with some fellow work friends at 11:30am. We went to a really nice place in the French Concession, called the Rooster. After this, I productively spent a few hours before my Xujiahui Chinese lesson working and BOOKING MY TRAVELS! I already have Busan in South Korea booked for the 7th April and now I have officially booked JAPAN for Qingming Festival. I have from the 31st March-4/5th off. I have booked to go to a pretty random, but awesome and beautiful, part of Japan called Takamatsu for three days and then Tokyo for two days. I'm super excited as if its the same as last year it should be cherry blossom season! 

After my Chinese lesson, I met grace for yet another Chinese speaking lesson in Starbucks. We then met some other friends for dinner and a cheeky glass of wine! Life is good and I'm all ready for another week of work! 

I'll be in touch,

Sabrina Xxx


Location: Shanghai, China

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