Harry Potter and the Cafes of Shanghai

Sunday I slept in a bit and headed out for my ambitious day of reading Harry Potter in enough different cafes to keep from being hungry or obnoxious.

Started at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for brunch, then headed over to Huaihai Lu for a quick break in my mission...the post office. I wanted to be sure I could ship my big suitcase to Beijing, and that it would take a reasonable amount of time. Seems like that should be fine. I keep forgetting to mention it, but my plan is to stay here through the close of the first session of camp on August 11, have a day to pack and say goodbyes, then take a plane on Monday to Qingdao. There are no fast trains there so it would've taken 18 hours, which just doesn't appeal to me that much. I'll have a few days to see the sites of Qingdao, then take an overnight train for a measly 9 hours to Beijing. (There are faster trains, but they're not overnight.) I hope to be reunited there with both my suitcase and its kind recipient, Lizzie from Swarthmore. She's offered to not only receive my suitcase but also let me sleep on her floor, but especially since she'll be at the end of her program (which I assume means exams) I think I'll keep some of my stuff with her but stay at the hostel that Abby Mayer has highly recommended. Sounds like a pretty decent plan, no? And only about 40 billion ways it could go wrong.

Back to what's important, I finally found the Vienna Cafe, which is super cute but unfortunately not that convenient. Had some plum cake there and did more reading. Went to a good yoga class, which was the full-length Hot class. I like this instructor too...she says almost everything in both languages, which means it's good practice for me without being stressful. I'm going to get back to States and wonder why people aren't treating me differently and smiling extra big at me, though. As excited as I am to be able to just blend in sometimes.

Did some dinnering and more reading at Figaro, and took the bus home. This bus said the right number, but it had a couple characters I didn't know after it, and after doing the entire rest of the route the same, it got to a place I didn't recognize and was like "last stop." Um, okay. Luckily, after a brief look around, I discovered I was actually closer to home than my normal stop, although completely on the other side. Interesting.

And after that day almost entirely structured around reading, I'm still not very far. I guess I'm not really committed to blasting through it...I'd rather really follow what's going on and savor it a bit more. Does prolong the time no one can talk to me about it, though. (It's worth noting that at least 2 waitresses have taken interested in it and wanted to know where I bought it.)