Sofia Cortes & Stacey Belyaeva

June 3rd:
After our adventure in Zhengzhou, we grabbed our last delicious lunch organized by Johnson (our tour guide) and headed to the train station. The train to Shanghai lasted approx. 5 hours which was great because we all got plenty of time to sit with our groups and start crafting our final research paper…and play some fun card games too. By the time we arrived in Shanghai, every group had a pretty solid thesis and outline so we were all ready to go out and explore.

Jenny and Sarah working hard on the train

Working hard or hardly working ? 😉

Our first night in Shanghai we took the subway to The Bund which is a waterfront area where, even despite the air pollution, we got to see the STUNNING skyline. I was so amazed to see how cosmopolitan and modern this city is with its multitude of restaurants, clean streets and tall office buildings. Funny story we were all convinced that our moment of fame and random strangers taking photos with us was over but a group of monks came up to us asking for selfies and pictures! #WeChatViral

June 4th:

Yummy breakfast at the Sheraton!

We had the best breakfast this day in our hotel, the Four Points Sheraton. There were waffles, toast, eggs, noodles everything! Since we have a lot more independent meals in Shanghai we all took advantage of the delicious food.

The next day we all split up into our research groups to conduct our field work in Shanghai. The Supplement group visited several pharmacies and supermarkets to collect their final data and observations. They then had the best idea ever and decided to go to a dog and cat café to play with the animals and take a bunch of photos (the puppies were so cute!!).  They then got some yummy drinks and continued working on their final paper.

Such a fun trip to the dog and cat café

The Caramel Macchiatos visited a few coffee shops around the city before going to the biggest Starbucks store in the world: The Shanghai Reserve Roastery!! As Starbucks fanatics themselves it was a dream come true and everyone was in shock at how amazing the store was. In addition to the traditional Starbucks goods they sold clothes and pizza and even had demonstrations showing how coffee beans are roasted. As the Starbucks pamphlet put it, it was a “bean-to-cup experience…inside a coffee wonderland.”

The central decoration in the Starbucks Reserve Roastery has words like “world” and “traceability” written all over it

Love this quote!