So Monday night I made a spontaneous trip to China…no biggie. I was getting ready to work, work, work after taking a nice, relaxing shower and I get a phone call from Nabila…”So, how was dinner?” small talk here and there..and then BAM! the persuasion begins..haha…unfortunately, manning up and refusing temptation has never been my forte…I was in desperate need of a massage and a relaxing night, so I decided to go to Shenzhen with the gang…we embarked at around 9:30 pm…Although it sounds intense, China is literally a 20 minute train ride away from CUHK. It’s so convenient, yet I have only made use of my multi-entry visa ONCE..and that too, was to Beijing. When we arrived, I was immediately excited to step foot on Chinese soil. In fact, I’ll admit that I got a little tooo excited and made a stupid remark about being in China right as we got off the MTR…haha, but anyway, we went through immigration, got a taxi, and headed out of the normal world…to the Queen Day Spa. As we entered the spa, I felt like my soul was being taken over..haha, I kid, I kid..but honestly, it felt a little strange. People working there were super friendly and the pampering began immediately. It was a high class place with people walking around in ugly, over sized pj’s getting full body scrubs, taking showers, enjoying foot massages, or enjoying the FREE complimentary fruit and ice cream…I felt like I was being bribed and then would have my organs stolen…it was toooo good to be true. The people there, however, were really odd and acted like they had never seen Indians before…one guy walked by with his ice cream cone 5 times, blatantly staring at Nabila and I (Either he was stunned by our beauty or he was shocked by our darkness…I’d like to think it was the former…let’s be a little confident, yea?) So when we got there, the guys and girls split up. Nabila and I went down to change and she took a shower. We came up and loaded up on the free fruit: pomelos, bananas, kumquats, watermelon, grapes, cherry tomatoes, and pears. I avoided the ice cream, as I did not want to suffer a miserable night by the toilet (though, I must say, if that had happened, it would not have been too miserable–going to the toilets was quite the pleasurable experience, with butt warmers and all!) But, anyway, we then went to get our massages.
The massage room was wonderful. The beds were superrrr comfy and the masseuses (who, by the way, could not speak a word of English) came in and began their magical work. I surprisingly did not feel uncomfortable at all and the massage felt reallly good! After the massage, we were taken to this lounge area with reclining chairs that each had their own personal TVs. Apparently, the atmosphere reminded my friends of Wall-E (which I have not seen, so I could not relate..but maybe it will help you guys imagine what it was like). I was exhausted, but ended up staying up until 4 am chatting with a few friends. While my friends were talking about finance, I got a littttle bored so I fell asleep. But then, I was woken up 20 minutes later because we were going to move to a room where we would not have to suffer through the snoring symphony of old, Chinese men…haha…Nabila and I were separated from the guys, yet again. I asked the ladies to give me a wake up call at 9 am, because I had a presentation the next day, which I had not finished working on! So I basically got less than 3 hours of sleep and was pretty peachy the next morning, considering my lack of sleep.
Nabila and I got back around 10 and I skipped my GPA class in order to finish my presentation! I finished it and did a pretty good job presenting it!
The second topic I would like to broach is my disappointing cullinary experiences from today: Today has been the most awful day in terms of getting edible meals. I got some coffee earlier today..BAD idea…I have been sleep deprived and needed an extra boost of energy…so I thought I would try some hazelnut coffee from the coffee bar..little did I know that it would come sweetened and milkened..haha…I felt soo sick after drinking the coffee that I could barely focus in class..whoops. For lunch, I basically ate a few bites of plain rice. I look on the menu at our canteen and see “Marinated Ginger Chicken”…sounds dec, right? I was wrong. It was as if the cooks cut up a whole chicken and dunked the pieces in Indian medicine, and served it on a plate, with fat and all…I could not stand the smell and suffered a few recurring bad memories from childhood summers in India where I was spoonfed the God-awful medicine that was supposed to help me with my fevers…
The third cullinary failure occurred with my disgusting smoothie…you’d think you can’t go wrong with smoothies, right? wronggg..so I decided to get a smoothie, orange paradise, with oranges, bananas, and apples…usually the smoothies are pretty good. I watched the guy make my smoothie and this is what he did: he took a tiny piece of an apple and two slices of an orange and put it in a blender with some type of syrup and ice….and wahhh lahhh: my smoothie was made…my first thought even before taking a sip: what happened to my bananas, buddy? but, I did not lose hope completely, as I was hoping the syrupy stuff he tossed in contained some pureed banananas or somethin…I took about three sips of the smoothie and felt sick to my stomach, yet again…oh cullinary failures, why do you bug me soo much today? So now I cannot bear to eat any more canteen food and am making myself some gooood ‘ol corn-on-the-cob…perhaps another cullinary failure? let’s be optimistic and say: NO SIRRREEE! 
Nabs and I in the massage room sporting our sexy, pink pjs!
