Class is still changing as during this first week is the only time students can change. I spoke to a guy in my class from London too and he says he misses it there and has been in Shanghai for 10 months now.
After my class I went back to the flat to drop off my books and then trekked to Hongqiao Road station to get to Changshou Road. I'm still trying to stay calm at the attitude of people here that will keep walking and not give way at all, and they will block the train doors and not let you off that you have to barge past.
I didn't realise how far it was to the hairdressers from the station and I walked down a long long road. Don't underestimate the distance from looking at the Google Maps - it is actually very far and most places aren't walkable to. You also need to keep in mind it could be about 15-20 mins to walk to your destination from the nearest Metro station....
When I reached the hairdressers they could speak English which was a relief. In fact they seemed most catered to foreigners and most people in there were foreign. I wanted to get my hair straightened after the huge ordeal when I first arrived. One of the guys doing my hair was learning English so we were talking a bit. In total I had 3 guys and a lady doing my hair! And seemed to cause some stir as other hairdressers came over to touch my hair or watch what was being done it felt a bit like being a superstar! Throughout my stay in Shanghai I do get a lot of comments about my hair colour.
This hairdresser did try to get me to buy some treatment for my hair but I knew I only had the same stuff put in my hair last week so I didn't fancy spending 200RMB for a tiny bottle. I also still have this other box of treatment I walked out with from the other hairdresser that charged me like 3800RMB for!
It took about 3-4 hours to do my hair! They did it very differently to how the other place did it for me. They washed my hair, put in some weird gunk and waited and kept testing strands of my hair that became very stretchy! They washed out the gunk, blow dried my hair, straightened it (had two people at the same time tugging in different directions was rather painful), then more gunk put in and I had to wait about 20mins. They then washed it out and blow dried it and told me I couldn't wash it for 3 days. All in all I'm really happy with this place, they weren't at all pushy, they brought me hot tea and had foreign magazines (although I'm not too sure why they handed me a German one I couldn't read and told them I was from England...)
I then went across the road to a noodle bar and had a huge hot stone bowl of rice with Japanese style beef, soup and a drink came to 20RMB! Couldn't believe how cheap and it was so good ^^ I then decided to take a taxi back as it was raining and I knew how long it would take to walk back to the Metro and couldn't stand the idea of ruining my new hair.
I was very lucky that a guy was getting out a taxi right where I was standing so I hopped in. I managed to speak to the taxi driver entirely in Mandarin and he understood right away and took me (thank you to the English guy who gave me the advice about giving the cross road that joins makes it much easier for the driver to find!). We were stuck in traffic for ages and here I was thinking I would avoid the rush by leaving at 5pm....
Finally got back and did some Chinese character writing as next week I have a dictation in my reading class. Tomorrow is an afternoon start which is a relief actually although I need to be out of here by 12pm as the Ayi comes in to do the housework. So I need to find somewhere to make myself scarce until my class.
There are still constant fireworks going off here that should end by tomorrow I'm told. I actually can't wait because they are making me rather jumpy..... Also the streets have a lot of red paper from lighting firecrackers.
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