Day 1 Of The Lantern Festival

I was trying to sleep for a long time but my mind woke me up at 6:20 in the morning. HA! I noticed that my body wouldn't move though and it felt heavy so i forced myself to sleep. I woke up constantly but I finally slept until 11:30AM.

This is when I started the battle of finding a Carrefour家乐福 close to me. Since no one knows how to give me directions， I was online mixing and matching maps and addresses until 4pm! (well I was watching a drama first so I really didn't start until 1 or so...) But I finally made a good guess of which was closer and how to get there by the metro. (Taxi =$$)

I was quite impressed with myself getting there so fast! It was getting back that was a complete hassle. I had planned to meet my friends to eat dinner by Yu Garden and then go in to see the lantern festival.(Sorry I will post the amazing pics tomorrow) The problem was I had to take the line 3 (which got me there) back to transfer to line 8 and then walk to the garden (since I don't know bus routes still).

Sadly line 8 is outside and across the street inside a hotel from the line 3 station...-_- I know. I got lost because a sign told me to walk by the Soccer stadium but the stadium has no signs to guide you，so I just made a big circle. Then I went out of the other exit that the map showed and got lost again because the only sign I saw was broken and pointed to a convenient store...literally directly at the convenient store.
SO! I asked a few people while aimlessly walking back and forth and finally asked a family ( inside what I thought was a night watch stand) and they told me. It's on the other side. O.O (The other side was an alley... a dark alley behind a hotel with what turned out to be a garage.)
After seeing me walk into that alley the son ran to me and said "Where are you walking?! What's even back here!?!" haha
We started laughing as I apologized for making him run (it was an alley so I walked fast). Then he said "my parents are at the corner they'll help you."
So sure enough at the corner the mom says "it's inside the hotel exactly on the left." Then I saw the sign, apologized to them for having to come show me, to which they said it's nothing and watched me safely go inside, and finally got on the sub.

My friends texted at 7:15 sayin they were just leavin and I let them know that I was just on the way too. Thinking they'd meet me at the restaurant (I was so hungry) I walked there first. For some reason they had paid and gone into the Festival area and then said ‘so where's the restaurant?-_-. [Usually you wait outside for the extra 5-10min your friend is late.] So we ended up walking around and checking out all of the lanterns and watching the dragon dancing and parade, until finally we knew we should eat. With luck gone out the window, the food I had been craving for 2weeks was closed. So we started walking back to the metro (as everything else was closed) until I looked at the bus stop sign and said 'let's just take the bus'. For some reason they questioned whether I knew where it would go, but the sign said 人民广场 [People's square]. So of course I knew.

We got to our destination outside of campus and chose to eat dumplings. They go 6 for 2.5yuan[$.37] and so a meal of that is cheap and de-lurcious. Now I am thinking I should study for my class in the morning but I'm tired so I'll study before it starts (because I wake up unconsciously before 7:30 anyway).