I've been slacking on the blogging a bit so this is a long one.

If there is one thing my cousin Kevin knows about, its where to get the best food. His big Buddha belly should be proof enough. Well anywyays, the past few days I've been hanging out with Kevin a lot. Partially because I got stuck at his apartment during the Typhoon and partially because he's awesome and I like hanging out with him. He has also been helping me out a lot here, helping me get my phone set up and also introducing me to the agency that he uses to find tutoring jobs.

Monday night Kevin took me to the coolest/best hotpot place. The restaurant is called Hai Di Lao which a direct translation would mean Ocean Floor Scoop. This restaurant is known for its exceptional service and it is immediately apparent the moment you walk in the door. When we went we had to wait for maybe 30 minutes. But as soon as we walked in, there were people telling us to take a seat and rest. Three stools were immediately conjured up for us in the waiting area, and a tray of melon, sour plum juice, and a delicious take on popcorn was brought out. Me and Kevin went to town on the popcorn and our little bowl had to be refilled several times. There were also games you could play while waiting and girls can even get a manicure for free while waiting!!!!

If you don't know what hotpot is, shame on you. I guess its like the asian version of fondue? There is a big pot of boiling broth that you dump different meats, seafood, vegetables, and noodles into and you eat it all as it cooks in the broth. Also, cooking the different things in the broth provides a delicious soup to drink along with the meal. I will load pictures as a visual representaions of hotpotting.

So the best selling item that this restaurant had was shrimp balls. haha they make a paste time thing out of shrimp and scoop it into little balls for you table side and drop them in the broth. The service at the restaurant was so awesome that you never actually had to put anything into the hotpot yourself. We ordered a large assortment of things besides the shrimp balls like lamb meat, a seafood platter with oysters and scallops and shimp, golden mushrooms, tofu, lotus root, and some noodles that came with an entire show. The noodles we ordered were called Kung Fu Noodles or something like that. A special noodle guy came out to our table and stretched out this long piece of noodle dough and did a little dance thing with it. I will load a video of it, but it was really cool to watch, kind of like being at bennihanna. Hai Di Lao also has the most amazing sauce bar. Its a long counter with over 20 different sauces or sauce additives like chilli peppers or scallions. The whole expereince was awesome and I would definitely recommend dining there to anyone visiting Shanghai. Oh and the cost? less than $20 per person, pretty sweet deal if you ask me!

Then Tuesday night and Wednesday night the Typhoon hit. All day Tuesday people were talking about the Typhoon and I just kept thinking, "yea right, like a typhoon is going to hit Shanghai.." for some reason that idea just seemd so outlandish to me at the time. Now, I definitely understand the concern people had. The winds were blowing pretty much all day, but the rain didnt start until later in the night. The storm stayed away long enough Tuesday for Kevin to finally take me to expereince the foot massages he has be raving about to me for the past year. I have to say, it was pretty great.

And I guess the windows in Shanghai are not built at the same quality as the ones in the US because they are nowhere near air tight. The wind was HOWLING so loudly all through the night as it passed over the non-airtight spaces of the windows. The windows were also rattling, so combined with the howling, it was a pretty loud tuesday night. Wednesday was the worse day. It was pouring rain ALL day!

To give us something to do tuesday night, Kevin borrowed a DVD player from his friends at a games store just down the street from his apartment. And as a joke wednesday during the heaviest bit of rain, they called Kevin saying someone was at the store and wanted to test some DVD's out so he needed to bring the DVD player back ASAP. So Kevin and I decided to brave the rain and bring the player back. It was pouring and Kevin got soaked through walking the maybe 3 minutes to the store. We also had to walk through about 6 inches of water that was flooding the streets in order to cross the road. And folks, this was not clean water by any means... I thought I was going to get some sort of skin disease, or even possibly just a regular old disease from walking through that water. After realizing it was a joke we all had a good laugh and then Kevin and I picked out a few more movies to watch and headed back to his apartment.

Today at noon I met Kevin at a soup dumpling place also very close to his apartment. It was a very tiny hole in the wall restaurant with seating for maybe 10 people at the absolute maximum. we got wonton soup and three racks (each rack had 8) of soup dumplings. They were all super delicious. If you have ever been to Joe's Shanghai in NYC, these little dumplings give those a run for their money. And for only 5 rmb a rack and 4 rmb for a bowl of soup and wontons, this little place CERTAINLY ranks right up there with Joe's Shanghai. Our whole meal cost us less than $2 a person. HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?!?! SO good! SO cheap! ahhh I love chinese food.

As for the next few days, I've got several tutoring interviews lined up. Wish me luck! And tomorrow Todd Lane is coming through Shanghai! If all goes well we are meeting up for dinner tomorrow, and now that I think about it, maybe I will take him to the hotpot place. It is definitely quite the expereince.

Miss you all! Hope I didn't bore you with this novel of a post! <3