A day at the park...

Well guys this would be my first actual blog...(this is Stephen) Deborah thought that I should try my hand at blogging... so here we go!

We thought we should update everyone about the new crew we have been rolling with in Shanghai... they are kinda a scrappy bunch... But we have fun.

So here is everybody... this is in our best traditional Chinese poses from a few weeks ago. We have Jeremy and Mallory on the left, Deborah and Jodi making a Chinese heart in the back center, Kristin and Chris doing their best vogue looks, Taylor screaming a Pokemon's name, and me looking like a 13 yr old Chinese girl who just saw Justin Beiber in person... This was a beautiful night where we met up and ordered some hamburgers from a restaurant named "munchies" (they deliver) and then played boardgames... pretty good evening in Shanghai.

This past Saturday we decided to go to Century park. A cool public park over on the Pudong side of Shanghai (all that really means is that its on the East side of the river that runs through Shanghai.... WESTSIDE 4 LIFE !)

Any who, now that I got that out... We went there and rented these interesting bikes... The guys saw the awesome 3 man tandem bike and got excited and of course the girls wanted something high tech and fancy so we ended up getting them this ghetto buggy...

So we headed off on our adventure... I was manning the steering wheel and what a ride... I had my two co- pilots leaning the opposite direction of me the whole time trying to make us crash... what do they care they're not at the front so they wont hit the tree, bush, or small Chinese child... From the very beginning though, we had a bad feeling about the mechanical integrity of the bike...

So after leaving the girls behind in our dust we rounded a corner and heard a loud pop and quickly came to a stop... apparently this bike wasn't designed with the weight of three American males in mind... So we had to hijack the girls ghetto buggy and drive back with the bike on the luggage rack... funny thing the lady running the shop wasn't even phased by it... I'm guessing she has had this happen before...

After we returned to our women triumphantly with a brand new bike they told us they wanted to switch and of course being the gentlemen we are we told them that would be fine... that's when we realized we had been tricked... The ghetto buggy was not as fun as the bike... it was actually a lot harder to peddle... The girls shot off not to be seen again. ( we found out later they made sure to stay far enough away so that we couldn't ask them to switch back... good thing Deborah is so cute! ) Even though the ghetto buggy wasn't as fast or nimble as the bike it was sturdy... so we decided to see if it could handle stairs... it did, quite well in fact! So we played chicken with a couple of people, road down some stairs, chased some bubbles, and even stopped for a few pictures on what developed to be a very romantic man date...

So after we returned the ghetto buggy and the girls finally showed up from their adventure we decided to share with them a little oasis we had discovered while cruising through the park... It was an awesome water fountain thing that was blasting water just like ol' faithful! It had everything we could ask for! Water, slippery tile that we could run and slide on your stomach like a penguin, little naked Chinese kids running around! What a great find! One of the best parts was watching a old man take his little grandson who had just destroyed his diaper and he decided that the fountains would make a great bidet! It looked more like a super enema but either way I think that kid was clean when it was all said and done... gotta love China :)

We felt like the day was a complete success! Now of course when you have three adult men acting like 5 year olds something is bound to happen... the secret was staying on the black tile... they were slippery... the concrete next to it... not slippery... So we all ended with a few cuts and scrapes... Taylor Sparks the hairy Yettie on the left took one for the team... I suggested that he slide through my legs like a penguin and between focusing on not hitting a kid, water blasting him in the face, and trying to knock me down once he was through my legs he forgot one thing... focusing on his landing...

Taylor took one on the chin... it was a pretty deep cut... It was all fun and games until someone had to get hurt... It was deep! I think you could have fit a quarter inside it! OK... it wasn't that deep but it was intense nonetheless. So we ended up walking to a Chinese grocery store and buying super glue... We went to the nasty bathroom inside the store and played operation on Taylor's face. It went well until Taylor pressed a paper towel to his face that got stuck and then couldn't pull it off...

Long story short the next 3 hours were dedicated to carefully shaving his mangy beard, using tweezers to pull out the hardened glue and flesh, and checking wikipedia on how to perform surgery with super glue... the second attempt was much better!

After that intense surgery we ordered munchies again and watched a movie... This truly was a great Saturday in Shanghai. Only three more weeks and then we are back in the good ol' US of A!