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On Monday, after grocery shopping at Tesco and going out for sesame sugar bao zi with Sara and Megan, Maike and I hit up the huge knitting factory that we stumbled upon last week behind the metro station. We bought some yarn and needles to start knitting some sweet scarves! 

The third soccer game of the tournament was this past Tuesday. Our team totally ruled and won 4-0. 

The final competition will be next week against the Xin Jiang students' team, which will be a close match! Those students are all brilliant athletes. 

This Friday we had our 月考 (monthly tests) in comprehensive Chinese, oral Chinese and Listening. I feel pretty good about all of them! 

I stayed in the dorms this weekend, so Friday after school I went with Maike (who was also dorming it) to a famous street where they film lots of movies just a few metro stops away. 

We then got our nails done and ate some delicious Xin Jiang spicy sour cabbage fried rice (酸辣白菜炒饭). It was a nice night out on the town. 

Saturday morning, we went to an absolutely rad barcamp "unconference". It was kind of like a mini TED conference: a free-for-all where Shanghai locals and foreigners from all walks of life could give talks and share ideas on a variety of subjects (mostly related to technology and innovation). 

I went to a load of interesting and inspiring talks. There was one on the real time web that was cool. Another was on using the Internet to create networks of girls in privileged/unprivileged communities to build creativity and leadership by helping each other learn math/science/language. I thought the aspect of emphasizing equal exchange between communities was pretty neat: instead of it just being the privileged girls tutoring the less-privileged girls, they both learn and help each other simultaneously; girls in a rural Chinese village can teach American girls Chinese as they learn math or girls in Shanghai and Ghana can tackle a computer science program together, for example. I also thought that the idea of using these grassroot club networks to encourage the development of extracurricular confidence, creativity, and entrepreneurialism in Chinese school girls was a meaningful endeavor. 

Some of our own also decided to give on-the-spot talks! Maike got so inspired that she decided to give a wonderful talk on the way that writing can change the way we perceive the world. Keiondre also decided to give an awesome talk about utilizing today's technology in the language learning process. 

The last talk I went to in the afternoon was given by Sven, the Shanghai regional director of the burning man festival (who was actually present at the first burning man). He showed a video about the original Nevada burn, talked about the principles of the festival as well as alternative art and technology in general. He also discussed the upcoming satellite burn that they are planning to hold on an island a couple hours away from Shanghai in early June (actually beginning the 6th, the day I return to the States). I really look forward to going to the festival in the States someday and found it really interesting to see the way that they are trying to adapt the ideas here to attract a Chinese audience. 

All in all, it was a wickedly sweet day and made me really excited to totally nerd out with rad people in college and beyond!