Last night was freaking awesome. I admit that walking around Shanghai everyday got tiresome and made me really want to go home, especially these last few days. But, oh man, last night was so fun. So as you may or may not know, the World Cup kicked off in Germany last night with a game between Germany and Costa Rica. And since I'm staying in a youth hostel a whole bunch of us students went to the bar next door to watch the game. The game itself was great...three goals scored in the first 20 minutes of the game, 2 of them being Germanys. Beautiful, I tell you. The game ended 4-2 in Germany's favor But the game was made all the better because I was watching it with a whole bunch of international students. And Europeans are crazy when they watch soccer, so they made it really fun. Lots of singing (particularly the Tequila! song), clapping, and cheering. We all knew Germany was going to win, but it was still fun singing Cooooossstttaaaaa Riiiicccaaaaaa.....gotta cheer for the underdog yenno. Everytime there was a goal, we did cheers all around. It was great. Such a wonderful atmosphere last night...there were Chinese, Americans, Germans, French, Swedes, Irish, Scottish, British. Oh man, how wonderful.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention one of the best moments of the night. About 45 minutes before the game started, there was a HUGE fireworks show over the HuangPu River. Everyone ran up to the bar on the top floor of our hostel and stood out on the balcony for a fantastic view of the brightly lit Shanghai skyline, the river, and of course the fireworks. Everyone on the roof was cheering because we all thought this show was put on to kickoff the World Cup. Someone told me later on that it was to celebrate the successful completion of this 3-day conference among 7 Asian countries. But who the hell knew about that? Everyone was cheering and clapping for the World Cup on that roof. That's what I was doing.

I didn't like staying at the youth hostel at first because even though it's clean, it's not the comfortable hotel room with private bathroom that I've had the whole trip. But now I remember why we chose to stay here...the people. I love meeting a bunch of international people...students and adults alike.

Well, it's 12am and my time here is up. Adios!