Happy Birthday, Stuart

Stuart and I were pooped last night after a late night at the Expo and traveling back to our hostel, so we had another super long sleep.
We went for a nice walk in the morning to the one and only place we've found that serves foods that are almost familiar and breakfast like: Cafe 85!
We had our usual: 2 pieces each of maple toast. I had an ice coffee, Stu had a mango smoothie.
It took SO LONG to communicate what 'ice coffee' meant. I pointed at the coffee and then shivered. I figured that would be pretty good. I think I need to learn to say ice because the made me hot coffee, put a little bit of ice in it, and told me to shake it. I gave them a confused look and then they made it the right way. Looks are universal. Thank goodness for that!
We decided that morning that we'd head to Beijing on the night train and skip the in between stuff because we want to spend 6 days exploring there before heading down to Vietnam through the other side of China (where all the best stuff is: famous mountains, terracotta soldiers, beautiful landscapes) and skip places that we don't know much about and we'd only spend a day at.
When we got back to the hostel, it was time to pack up and turn in our key. Then we booked a hostel for the 15th and 16th in Beijing (that looks totally cool!) and headed out.
We headed for the train ticket station only to find that all of the trains for the 14th were booked! Oops...
We bought some tickets for 10:30am on the 15th and headed back to the hostel we just left to go on hostelworld and figure out where we were going to stay tonight. EVERYTHING except really expensive hostels were booked solid! I went to the front desk at this hostel and asked if they had anything available (it said they didn't on the website) and low and behold ONE room was left! The lavender room! The glorious lavender room! A private room with a leaky shower. PERFECT! Sign us up!
With that behind us, relieved (but also annoyed that we had to pay for another night in Shanghai) we decided to get some afternoon lunch.
We tried a new place that was... okay.
Deep fried prawns, breaded pork with cheese, and rice with pork. Yum yum. There was no actual pork in the rice with pork and it didn't taste like anything. I wonder if we ordered wrong...
We went to my favorite park after and I did some exercise in the field (very normal around here). There will be people doing tai chee, 'running' (aka shuffling), flying REALLY impressive kites way way in the air, and playing badminton with no net all over the place in the park. Stu and I love watching the men with their kites. These are not normal kites people, the are deluxe!
We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for the cheapest bottled water. 1.50 RMB was the best we found (22 cents US)
We chilled out in the hostel for pretty much the rest of the day and went out in the evening for some DQ.
It was Stu's Chinese birthday yesterday (and his Canadian Birthday today!) so he got a 'birthday blizzard'! It was the 25th anniversary and beside the blizzard thing it said '2 yuan' so WE thought that meant buy one get one for 2 yuan (sort of like in Canada how it was buy one get one for 25 cents) and Stuart asked the girl (as best he could) if that 's what that meant. She said yes... but then they made us one with the flavor I wanted and the flavor Stu wanted mixed in. (Oreo waffle cone)
Stuart 'talked' to the girl making them and she gave him another one and told us that we had to pay her. We were confused, she was confused, and eventually we left with 2 blizzards (for the price of one). Victory!
We came back and played some crib. By 9:30 I was hunnnngry for dinner so we set out for some take-out which I ordered from some restaurant close to our place that evidently does not do take out.
They gave me my dinner FREEZING COLD and it was in 2 plastic baggies in a tupperware.
It was probably the worst thing I've eaten here yet. (No offense, Shanghai but your food blows!)
Apparently Shanghai is not famous for their Chinese food.
(so thaaats why there are so many KFC's around here!)

And that's a wrap. Goodnight!