Shanghai on Life

Soooooo, Hong Kong was great, as expected :D Once again we are back to “reality” in Shanghai with the final big trip of exchange behind us. It was interesting to see the differences between Hong Kong and mainland China, and there were many! Actually being in Hong Kong hardly feels like being in China at all, more like an international city with no national origin. There were so many foreigners there! and almost everyone speaks English, so we all enjoyed having effective communication skills again for at least a few days.

We arrived on Wednesday evening and headed to our hostel in what we later found out was located in the best district in Hong Kong to make a drug deal! The hostel was clean and the staff friendly in any case, but by far the most hilarious bit was the size of our room. Our 4 person dorm turned out to be about as big as a good-sized master bathroom, with two double beds that were so short I couldn’t sleep straight without my feet hitting the wall. There was about 5-10 square feet of floor space and the rest was just beds. Sandra and I managed ok, but I guess Christian and Simon were not as comfortable and got a little tired of my “big spoon/little spoon” jokes after awhile. That night we went out for ladies night which was even better than in Shanghai, strong free-drinks everywhere you turned. We started off at the “Happy Valley” horse racing tracks where I placed one bet of 20 Hong Kong dollars on Finn McCool (chosen solely based on his name, not on odds of course) for the win. After being distracted and missing the race we decided to try and cash our slips anyway, pretty sure that we hadn’t won. If you haven’t already guessed where this is going, I won 132 HKD! woohoo!…I wish I could say it was close to par with CAD, but in reality it works out to placing a bet of about $3 and winning $18, but still!

On Thursday we slept in a little then took a tram to some peak for a view of the skyline. A little bit of shopping and eating later we went for a harbour cruise on a refurbished ferry from the 1920’s to see the Hong Kong lights at night. We then met up with Sandra’s friend Nina for a dinner of snake soup and fried snake on rice :D Snake was once a popular dish in Hong Kong but isn’t very common anymore. Some people say it tastes like chicken, but people say that about everything and I don’t think it’s very true in the case of snake. The inside muscley bit was this kind of flaky and a bit gritty in texture and the skin was fatty and a bit slimy as could be expected. It was only gross psychologically, the taste really wasn’t so bad, but I guess it wouldn’t be my favourite meat even if I could overcome the psychological barriers. After dinner we asked the owners if they could bring out one of the live snakes from the back (they butcher them on-site) and so they did! I was all set to hold it and prove what a snake cowboy I am, but then the guy pulls the snake out of the box and proceeds to scotch-tape its mouth shut! I probably would have been more comfortable if he hadn’t taped the mouth at all, but knowing the snake needed to be muzzled and knowing that that muzzle was made of scotch tape seriously freaked me out! I decided to wuss out and let other prove their bravery by holding it while I settled for just  touching him on his back end. After dinner we headed to the big night market for some atmosphere and shopping. At the night market we decided to have our fortune told which was a definite good use of money. I feel more comfortable planning my future as I will have a strong, tall husband within a few years and won’t have to do anything but housework after marriage – and to think I’ve already wasted all this time on trying to build up a future career! Apparently I need to keep my boyfriends and husbands away from Steph though, because if I don’t she’s going to run off with him! haha too good! Before I get married I’m going to work in the travel industry, in education (because of my long fingers of course), selling furniture, or in a flower shop (bit random, but I guess I wouldn’t be overly opposed). I will have good health, be bad at saving money, get married in 2011, 2014, or 2016 and should live in cold places. Highlights of the fortune telling included Simon’s study habits being trashed again and again, Nina facing eerily accurate accounts of her family’s medical history and her romantic life, and Sandra being told she would marry an ugly, fat man (but he will be rich!).

On Friday we spent a frustrating morning getting ripped off in a cab which was fortunately followed by some super delicious dim sum at a restaurant/club called Dragon-I. The food was really amazing, for sure the best dumplings I’ve had since coming to China. We also sampled chicken feet which was better than snake in my opinion, but maybe it’s just that I liked the sauce.  After dim sum we headed to the ferry terminal and took a ferry to Macau.

In Macau we hit the international food festival followed by the casinos of course. Christian was the only one who managed any lucky wins but ended up gambling it back down to an insignificant sum. I lost on the slots, but Simon came out as the biggest loser of the evening in roulette. So yeah, pretty pathetic results, but at least I still have my glory days at the horse track!

The next day started with an early morning ferry ride and some very long naps in the Hong Kong airport as our flight got delayed for several hours. Turns out that a cargo plane overshot the runway in Shanghai and crashed which shut down the airport for the better part of the morning. We arrived home in time to shower and meet up again with other friends for Armin Van Buuren. So basically he’s this trance DJ from the Netherlands who everybody has heard of, but me? He “performed” (is this the correct verb for a DJ?) at a local club called M2 and I have to say that it was a very strange and awesome experience. It was such a funny thing because it was like attending a concert…he performed on a stage of sorts, people were all sweaty, pressed together, cheering and jumping around as if they’re at a concert, but not actually dancing to the music as if they’re in a club. And he’s standing up there most of the time not really doing much, fiddling around with the equipment a bit and then just, I don’t know, putting his arms up in the air and dancing around a bit – and all the while people are going CRAZY for him. The energy was good and I was definitely in the spirit of it. Despite never having heard his “music” (mixes? I have no idea about DJ terminology apparently) before I decided everything would work out for the best if I played the part of obsessed fan for the evening. I managed to make it to the front of the stage where (and I swear to you) Armin gave me the thumbs up! What a dream boat! Anyway, it was a good evening.

Well, it’s bedtime in Shanghai. Love to all of you out there in blog land.

amy

Last weekend our basketball team played our first games of the season. The Shanghai American School was having a small tournament and after a team dropped out at the last minute we were invited.  As far as I have been able to tell we are the only women’s club team in Shanghai, highlighting the lack of popularity of women’s basketball here..19 million people in this city and one women’s team :) Anyway, that limits us to playing against international high school teams, university teams and apparently the Shanghai farm team for the WCBA (Women’s Chinese Basketball Association) :S.  We played three games last weekend – lost the first on Friday night and won both on Saturday. Yesterday (Saturday) we had another game which we won and an hour from now we have practice. As much as I enjoy my relaxed Shanghai lifestyle of little academic stress and firm time commitments, I have to say that there’s something nice and familiar in having to roll out of bed (and not being happy about it) on a Saturday morning to go run around with a team. It feels so great to play basketball again, I didn’t realize how much I’d been missing it. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s the king of all sports – aerobically, mentally, socially, basketball is just so awesome!

It’s a strange thing being on an all-Chinese team (sitting proudly on your integration high-horse) and then entering these gymnasiums and being warped back to Canadian high school.. all the girls at these schools are 17 and Caucasian, the parents look and act the same as our parents did in the bleachers, everything is happening in English, and the gym looks like you could be at Mt. Doug…but you’re in China, and it’s so weird!

The girls on my team are really great; they are inclusive, friendly and very curious about me and Canadian life. There are a couple of the girls who speak English fluently, but otherwise the communication with the other girls is through basic English, broken Chinese,  non-verbal communication, or (very commonly) with the aid of a trusty translator. They are very interested how basketball is at home (when did I play? How long did I play for? Do I know anyone who plays at university? Have I seen a WMBA game?) and what I think of China (Was it scary to come here? Are people shorter here? Is it a tropical paradise compared to Canada?). After the games last weekend we all went out for Chinese hot pot which was yummy. A big pot of boiling broth is put on a burner in the middle of the table and then you order all kinds of meat, vegetables and even bread that you cook in this soup. I impressed with my chop sticking skills (which are not that impressive, but the fact that I had any at all seemed to be good enough) and ability to eat all mysterious contents of the soup without questioning it.

Since joining the team, my personal feelings of pressure to learn more Chinese have ramped up ten fold. Because so many of my friends are other exchange students, the majority of my life here happens in English and even with Chinese friends I’m almost always speaking English (the conversation would be painfully short if it happened in Chinese :D). But with the team, everything is happening in Chinese, the game plan, the recap, the cheering, the joking around and it just makes you want to be able to participate. That said, I am again reminded how great sports can be linguistically. I don’t know exactly what it is about sports, but I really found the same thing when playing basketball in Sweden. I think it’s just that everything happens in context so it’s easier to fill in blanks of sentences where you only understood a few words…plus, communication is often quite simplistic, you can congratulate, console or encourage a teammate with only a few words .  I’ve started picking up on some of the Chinese basketball lingo. My teammates find it endlessly entertaining to hear me chanting “fang shou! fang shou!” from the bench with them rather than the usual “De – fence!”

Yesterday (Saturday) we had another game which we won and an hour from now we have practice. As much as I enjoy my relaxed Shanghai lifestyle of little academic stress and firm time commitments, I have to say that there’s something nice and familiar in having to roll out of bed on a Saturday morning to go run around with a team.

In other news, I am going to Hong Kong this week! Heading out on Wednesday and returning Saturday with Sandra, Simon and Christian.  We realized when booking our flights that our travel time lines were determined based on our party schedule (have to make it to Hong Kong for ladies night on Wednesday, have to get back to Shanghai for Saturday to see Armin Van Buuren apparently the best DJ in the world) – such busy, busy schedules! Hong Kong, hopefully with a side trip to Macao, should be a few days filled with shopping, eating, visiting a few friends, and maybe some gambling for good measure. Conor informs me that James bond also gambled in Macao, I always knew I had a lot in common with James. Special thanks to my parents for the generous birthday gift, some funds to cover the cost of this particular trip. We’re all agreed that it’s  Hopefully I don’t blow it all at the poker table ;) Just kidding, I’m such a card shark (yet another likeness to Bond) that would never happen.

Until next time!

amy

Many thanks to all those who sent birthday greeting by email, skype, facebook (btw, I get the notification in my email but I can’t log into the site to respond in case anyone was wondering), mail and however else!

My birthday in China was really one for the books – a truly memorable 22nd!

Most of the celebrations took place on the 7th, as Saturday is a much more appropriate day for birthday celebrations. In the morning Sandra and I dragged Christian and his visiting brother to the grocery store to stock up for the big night. The chips we could carry ourselves but beer was the main goal. You can buy an obscene amount of beer for 300 Yuan (~$50 CAD) in China, so that’ s exactly what we did!

That night I had dinner with Sandra, Danny Boy, Danny’s friend Ryan, Simon and Joy at the Japanese restaurant around the corner from our place. The party started at 9, but was kicked off a little earlier by a group of Daniel’s most fabulous (in every sense of the word) friends. I guess in the end we were some 20+ people, consisting entirely of Chinese people and Germans..and me, of course. Simon, who spent a year in Canada, helped introduce the classic drinking game of “King’s Cup” to give the party more of a Canadian feel, and despite a bit of confusion over how exactly one “busts a rhyme,” people caught on quickly enough. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening was “JJ,” a flamboyant and overly confident friend of Daniel’s who decided to try his luck with every foreign guy in the room even after being told none of them were gay. Christian’s poor little 17-year-old brother looked like a deer in the headlights when JJ made a pass at him.

There was a lot of anticipation for midnight, I think this might be some sort of German thing, but everyone said I couldn’t be wished happy birthday or open presents until midnight or it would be bad luck. So at midnight there was champagne, a countdown and even a small toast made by Sandra; it was like New Years eve, except all about meeee! :P Following that there was presents which included a framed photo collage from our recent travels and adventures, a couple of gag gifts, and a money pot which my closer friends contributed to on the condition that I use the money to fly somewhere (Hong Kong here I come!).

After presents the police showed up and told us to turn off the music and move the party along. We sent everyone out with a can of beer as a parting gift and headed out to the bar for a few hours of dancing. At around 3 or 4 we were enjoying some noodles and considering heading home when we were persuaded to karaoke instead, so we hit the KTV and ended up back home at around 6 :D Good times!

The next day (being my actual birthday) was mostly spent sleeping.  Woke up at 2, cleaned up the apartment, talked to Cody, and then went to basketball practice at 6.

Today life is getting back to “normal.” Had a class presentation this morning and now I’m updating the blog instead of studying for my midterm coming up at the end of the week. Daniel is taking me and Sandra out for dinner as his birthday gift to me and the post office informs me that there’s a package from Canada waiting to be picked up, so apparently I get to stretch my birthday on into the week as well :D

Anyway, thanks again for all the birthday greetings, it’s very nice to be remembered even when I’m so far away!

In an effort to get off the beaten track of urban China and see some scenery before the weather gets cold, Sandra and I ventured off with six friends to Huangshan (the Yellow Mountains) the weekend before last. This time the German-ness was broken up a bit by our Mandarin tutor and friend, Amanda, who is from Shanghai…not only nice to have her company but also good to dilute the group with another non-German speaker (especially one who’s not afraid to demand conversations be switched to English). The other five are friends who study at Tongji University (another university in Shanghai), three of which Sandra knows from Mannheim back home.

The trip started with a 6 hour bus ride on Friday evening. We arrived around 11PM in what at first appeared to be the middle of nowhere, China. It’s so funny because despite being a pretty small town and being the middle of the night, a couple of restaurants and even a small grocery store were open..absolutely nobody was on the street when we rolled off the bus and it was obvious that our hungry tourist selves were a sight for sore eyes for those restaurant owners. That night we stayed in a hotel which Amanda had arranged. We each paid 30 RMB (~$5 CAD), though the posted price for a room was over 600 RMB, so it’s easy to see that it pays to negotiate in China! We ate a big Chinese dinner in the middle of the night before turning in, mysterious and delicious as usual.

The next morning we left at 9 and hit the grocery store for breakfast and lunch supplies. Not big on refrigeration in this part of China (I guess the energy costs are not economical for shop owners), we were limited to strange, dried Chinese mystery goods, Oreo cookies and white bread. So cookies, bread and warm water it was!  I am sad to say that a large portion of our weekend was spent mainly on this diet, especially brutal when you’re trying to make it through hours of mountain climbing each day.

We took a bus to the base point for hikers and began our hike up a million, gazillion, badillion stairs that would soon become our nemesis for the next two days. Stairs, stairs and more stairs, I am serious when I say I wouldn’t have believed before that hike that I was physically capable of climbing so many stairs in such a short period of time. Imagine hours on end of climbing stairs straight up a mountain side, is this anyone else’s version of hell? Now, I was definitely in favour of the cable car option but nooooo we have to climb the mountain! I guess that’s what you get for traveling with a bunch of fit, hike-happy Germans. Stairs aside, the views were pretty breathtaking. Seeing the Yellow Mountains makes you appreciate Chinese paintings – I couldn’t get over how much the landscape resembled a painting (or I guess I should say, how closely Chinese paintings resemble this landscape).

Amanda mentioned that everything is a bit more expensive on the mountain and after about two minutes of climbing it was pretty clear why. All food, drinks, and supplies consumed on the mountain are carried to the top by men. Needless to say, these guys had the most ripped calves you’ve ever seen in your life. A long bamboo pole resting on one shoulder with two packages tied to string and balanced on either end, these men carried everything from toilet paper to vegetables, to flats of water and even gigantic watermelons. So you can only feel so sorry for yourself after you see these guys. Suddenly you’re not feeling so ‘woe is me’ carrying up your one weekend worth of clothes in your backpack with padded hip straps.

Four or five hours of stair climbing later we arrived at the hostel on top of the mountain hungry and covered in sweat. We changed and went back out to explore the nearby views and ate some apples and cucumber from a small stand as the hotel restaurant didn’t open until 5:30.

The hostel we stayed at was pretty hilarious. We slept in the most enormous dorm i have ever seen. There was one room with at least 100 people sleeping in it either in bunks or tents on the floor. We were staying in a “private dorm” of 8 women around the corner from this huge room, but in fact the walls were separated only by corrugated metal with gaps at the top and bottom, so as far as sounds, light and germs go, you were in fact sharing with about maybe 120-140 people.  The best (read:worst) part was the bathrooms..2 bathroom stalls and one sink for women, 3 shower heads for the whole dorm – I am not kidding! But overall Chinese people are much more tolerant of these cramped quarters unlike us privacy and personal space obsessed westerners and nobody seemed to mind much except us.

That night we sprung for the much needed all-you-can-eat buffet and a short stroll around in the fog after dinner. In the evening Amanda informed us that we would be hiking an even more difficult route the next day.  At first this seemed to defy mountain climbing logic, don’t we get to go down the mountain after climbing up it? But nooo, we had to then climb across the mountain range and then take a cable car down. And so we went to bed early and nobody slept as best we could considering our 200+ bunkmates.

Now, the whole point of sleeping at the overpriced, under-washroomed dorm on the top of the mountain is so that you can wake up in the middle of the night and book it up to the nearest peak to see the famous Huangshan sunrise.  So despite not getting much of any sleep we rolled out of our bunks at 4 in the morning to perform our tourist duty. Stumbling around in the cold and dark on wet stairs, none of us had considered that before sunrise it’s dark and we might need a flashlight but we made do well enough with the light from our cell phones. We found a suitable peak and waited for half an hour in the dark on its windy face. Waiting and waiting it seemed to be getting lighter… a bit cloudy, not the best morning for a sunrise, but we kept waiting. Crammed on the peak, a group of now about 15 of us and maybe 30 Chinese people, shoulder to shoulder, everyone stood quietly and waited. Brighter and brighter it became and eventually I was aware we were standing in full daylight and had seen absolutely nothing! But still, everyone just kept standing and staring off at the horizon, just waiting for something to happen when clearly it was over. The sun had risen on the other side of the mountain, and the 40+ of us had dragged ourselves out there in vain. Really just too  hilarious! Right on par with our palace double-dipping in Korea in my opinion! Here we had suffered all this travel hardship for this sunrise and ended up facing the wrong direction.

Cold and feeling silly we retreated back to the hostel for a breakfast of instant noodles, basically you’re only choice on the mountain.  So we started hiking again at around 6 and it was I guess around 11 or 12 by the time we made it to the other side of the range. We took the cable car down the other side of the mountain to save our knees and finally got to see some Huangshan monkeys on the way down!

From the bottom we did an hour or two worth of busing and transferring buses before arriving at Hongcun village, a Chinese village at the base of Huangshan also a UNESCO World Heritage Site as of 2000. One of the locations used in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Hongcun has a reputation as being the “village from a Chinese painting.” There were young art students painting and sketching literally around every corner, something I’ve yet to see once anywhere else in China. The village was established in 1131 and is apparently quite well preserved. The Internet tells me that the village was originally built by a feng shui master to resemble a cow..not something you notice just by passing through, but interesting all the same. We wandered around, ate some street food and met some really cute kids who were unusually proficient in English. We got back on the bus and headed back to the city to catch our bus back home. Some crazy mission-impossible style taxi taking, KFC eating, bathroom-going stunts later we made our second bus on time. Exhausted on the bus ride home we mostly slept, though I did manage to meet my first random Canadian in China, a nice guy from  Montreal doing his masters in architecture in Shanghai.

So we survived the Yellow Mountain, and though it wasn’t exactly a relaxing weekend getaway, the good company, scenery, and shenanigans made it more than worth it.

So I’m home with a cough and an unrelenting runny nose. It’s ladies night in Shanghai and I’m at home with a box of kleenex, my comforter, and my blog (no offence blog). My friends are out at a teppanyaki restaurant where it’s all you can eat (amazing) Japanese food and open bar..but I’m here popping antibiotics. Do you feel sorry for me yet?…No? Yeah, didn’t think so and don’t worry, you probably shouldn’t.

Today I almost lit our apartment on fire! It’s finally gotten cold in Shanghai in the last few days and so adventures in heating the apartment have begun! I have a space heater in my room, so I thought I’d break it out as my Chinese tutor was coming over and we study in my bedroom which was pretty frigid at the time.  Soooo flick on the heater, close the door to my room and maybe 20 minutes later my tutor arrived and we went to start our lesson. Opened the door and smoke comes pouring out and I’m sure at that point my room is on fire. Well, there was not fire, but the top of the heater is completely black and melted and everything in the apartment reeks of smoke and burnt plastic…good thing the landlord is coming over tomorrow! Another thing this experience has taught me is that we have no smoke alarms in the apartment. I was in full-fledged ‘close the door, open the windows and start waving the dishcloth around in the air’ routine when I realized there’s not an alarm to be found. I guess there’s a good chance there aren’t any alarms in any of the apartments in our building. My friend Christian claims that German people are not big on smoke alarms either, but this just doesn’t seem right…Germans seem like the most likely nationality to have smoke alarms (well maybe Scandinavian countries first, but then Germany for sure).

Those are all the stories from the day, the rest was just going to class and Chinese lessons. Over and out!

Greetings to my loyal audience! It’s been awhile now, but that Korea post really took it out of me I have to say. Life is still chugging along here in Shanghai. It is still warm and we’ve hardly seen any of this rain that people keep talking about, so I could get used to this! Don’t get too jealous though because I’m looking forward to a winter of sub-zero temperatures and no central heating :( After discovering our lack of central heating (and whining about it), Daniel suggested that I might consider wearing a sweater when I feel cold – a harsh slap in the face for an ex-Power-Smart rep..how far I’ve fallen already.

Last weekend I went on a day trip to a nearby city, Suzhou, with my friends Christian and Simon. Suzhou is known for its beautiful gardens and a history full of silk trading and prosperity. Wikipedia taught me that Suzhou is one of Victoria’s four sister cities, a little random but interesting fact. The day was fun and relaxed; we rented some rusty and rickety bicycles for $5 and biked our ways to some of these famed gardens, lunch and a temple. When we arrived back at the train station we found out it would be 3 hours before the next train and even that one only had “standing room only” tickets left. The Germans filled this wait time with beer (so cliché) and, eventually, seeing how many crackers they could fit in their mouth at one time (I may have encouraged this behaviour). I, on the other hand, managed to entertain myself with a Vogue magazine that I couldn’t read and a few too many games of solitaire. Not feeling like standing for 50 minutes on the train, we spent the ride home wedged into an empty luggage compartment and managed to catch quite a few stares…now not just the white people on the train but the white people inappropriately sandwiched between their suitcases on the train.

I have recently set about on a mission to make more Chinese friends. I have been hanging out quite a bit with a girl names Joy who is my age and studying accounting at Donghua University in Shanghai. She is in many ways typical Chinese…only child (with parents who worry too much) from Hunan province, came to Shanghai to study and obtain her Shanghai residence permit, loves KTV, table tennis, etc.). Joy speaks English quite well and had recently decided she wanted to expand her horizons (and improve her English) by meeting some foreign friends.  Last Thursday we went for lunch, shopping and a dose of education at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition and the Shanghai Museum. The exhibition has some neat exhibits about the history of Shanghai as a city, a floor dedicated to the upcoming World Expo (starting this May in Shanghai FYI), and (what everyone comes for) a miniature scale model of the city of Shanghai – very cool! I managed to find my neighbourhood but couldn’t locate our apartment building exactly.  The Shanghai museum was also very cool, a manageable amount of artifacts for one afternoon…calligraphy, jade, ancient currency, furniture, traditional paintings, etc. Joy’s father is a Professor who teaches ancient Chinese history (a subject she also takes personal interest in), so she had many insights which made the museum a lot more interesting. I have also begun a language exchange arrangement with another Chinese girl, Jasmine, who works and lives in my neighbourhood. Jasmine has a variety of projects she works on professionally, one of which includes a corporate social responsibility consulting project targeted at real estate development firms in Shanghai. When we meet I usually help her with fine tuning the English translations of her business plan or whatever else and she helps me with Mandarin.  It’s nice to get some free help and actually I enjoy working  on her stuff as well (CSR upstart initiatives in Chinese real estate development anyone? Cue nerdy business student drooling!).

Last weekend Sandra went to Xian (home of the famed Terracotta Army) to meet with one of her friends from school in Germany who is currently on exchange in Hong Kong. Sandra’s friend was traveling with five of her friends she met in Hong Kong and one of them happened to be Canadian. One question leads to another and this girl asks Sandra if she knows a Canadian Amy in Shanghai. “Like my roommate Amy?”.. So out of the oodles of universities in Hong Kong and the hundreds of exchange students at their university, it just so happened that Sandra’s friend, Nina, befriended my friend from UVic BCom and former co-worker, Lily. We didn’t realize that they were friends and in fact, both of them had planned to visit and stay with us in Shanghai together but we were in Korea at the time so couldn’t play host..all the while we never figured out that they were coming together and it wasn’t just a coincidence! aaahhhh small world-ness strikes again!

Other highlights in recent weeks have included being taken to dinner (along with Andy, the other BCom exchanger from UVic) with a bigwig from UVic Business International Programs who happened to be in Shanghai on business. A very nice and easy going guy, it was good to see a familiar face..also a passionate advocate of international exchange (Japan changed his life once upon a time), we get along just fine. But lets not forget, we got treated to some seriously awesome (and fancy) Chinese cuisine – lotus root stuffed with sticky rice, sichuan tofu, the coolest looking tea I’ve ever drank in my life, the list goes on. Last Thursday we watched our friend Simon (not lung Simon, another Simon) play trombone with “one of the best youth orchestras in the world” who he usually plays with in Germany.  I guess they are good enough to have all-expense paid trips to China, so I think it’s actually true…they were here for a week touring around with their last stop being in Shanghai, so not a bad deal! The concert was free and ended up being packed with locals who just went crazy for this German orchestra which was really nice to see. There was all this clapping to the beat, swaying, whooping and hollering, and a final standing ovation…it gave you those cross-cultural warm and fuzzies. On a side-note, some members of the orchestra returned to Germany with H1N1 which is apparently creating newsworthy quarantine and investigation hell for both the German and Chinese Governments…..78 people hitting different cities every night for a week makes it a bit difficult to narrow down the origin.

The basketball season has finally started up over here and I went to check out the team on Sunday night. I wasn’t able to play with them as I am sick at the moment (I may as well admit it as my mom has already busted me blowing my nose on skype), but the team looks great and I’m quite certain I will get a chance to play with them! I made it to a Rotaract meeting for the first time last night and it was also positive. The Shanghai club is a little more formal and a little older than our club at home, but everyone was very friendly and they are currently working on some impressive projects, so I’m hoping to stick with it.

I’ve been in Shanghai for two months already! This realization comes with pretty mixed emotions…less than three months to go until Jen, Cody and (hopefully) Sarah arrive for our grand tour around Southeast Asia (hooray!), but at the same time I feel like things are really getting started here, it’s already half way done :( On the bright side, it’s my birthday on Sunday, woohoo!

The first half of this post sat in the “drafts” folder for a little too long, so if time lines seem messed up, it’s because they are.  But anyhoo, this past weekend a group of eight of us went to Huangshan or “the Yellow Mountains”  where we saw some very famous Chinese scenery action! Anyway, more on Huangshan to come!

Hope everyone is well in fine, apologies to those of you who diligently check for updates..more posts are on the way :D

-amy