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On Monday I FINALLY got a chance to check out the climbing gym at the Shanghai Indoor Stadium! 

Although the routes were pretty limited, the walls were tall and I couldn't have been happier to get my hands on some (fake) rock. 

The vibes of the place were great too! There were lots of awesome local and foreign climbers. 

My fellow NSLI-Y chum, Brady, came with me and we climbed for a bit until he had to leave to meet a friend from his underground Christian church. I then made the acquaintances of a nice Austrian guy and his girlfriend; a Bluegrass guitarist with blonde dreads from Virginia and his Japanese friend; and Larry: a fellow gap year student who spent most of this year interning in Nancy Pelosi's office on Capitol Hill and is now traveling around China before going to Harvard next fall. He's headed to Beijing for the rest of this month, but I plan to meet up with him and his friend Grace when they come back to Shanghai in May. 

I'll probably come back a couple of times before I leave, but I can't believe we only have 7 more weekends left! 

Excited to return to Rocks and Ropes in Tucson and explore the real rock of the Southwest and California in the near future though!

This week, a new student came! Her name is Chichiro (like the protagonist in Spirited Away)! She is a Japanese 15 year old who lived in both America and England for many years and thus has perfect English. We're all excited to welcome her into our international student fold.

On Friday, we participated in the 11th annual Shanghai education globalization expo. 

Our school had an exhibition along with many other schools in Shanghai and we also did a performance. We performed what we did for the sports meet earlier this year (Kung fu, yoga and singing). Three of my Chinese friends from choir also performed a drum/guitar/singing number. Next year they'll all be going to college as well! One (Didi) is going to Purdue, one is going to Canada, and one is choosing between UC San Diego and Occidental. There were also many awesome dance, song and sword performances by other schools' students! 

Friday afternoon, I finally went home with my new host family!

My new host parents are SUPER chill. My host mom is a stay-at-home-mom and my host dad runs a construction company from home (my host sister and I actually sleep in an apartment next door that has also been refitted as a bunch of offices). 

My new host sister (Yang Xin or Sharon) is so cool and sweet. She's 17 and really into films (runs the movie review club of the IB department); we gushed over Miyazaki for a while and our relationship is off to a good start! 

My host brother who is 13, is also super cute! 

Saturday, we had a NSLI-Y outing to the movie museum and then I explored some other fun parts of the city with Tilden, Maike, Sara, Brady, Paris.