Shanghai on Life

So this is it! Today is my last day in Shanghai. Everything is packed, about to go get some dinner with Danny Boy and I’ll be on a flight to Bangkok early tomorrow morning. The last few weeks have been pretty busy and well, pretty blog-less as well I suppose.

I had a great visit with Steph, Mom and Auntie Rabina. I guess my favourite moment had to be at Qipu Lu…a very busy shopping district in Shanghai. After having numerous taxis stolen right from under us (the Shanghainese are ruthless when it comes to queue jumping and you-were-there-first general courtesies), I told the ladies to sharpen their elbows. Before you could blink Auntie Rabina was booking it down the street shoulder-to-shoulder with a small pack of Chinese girls running for an approaching cab. She peeled them off those door handles, waved to us and jumped in – I couldn’t have been prouder! Once in the cab, the driver looked at me with a huge grin on his face, laughing and saying “foreigners! foreigners!” giving the thumbs up and even taking his hands off the wheel for a quick impression of us all running for his cab. We had an excellent visit, filled with lots of shopping, eating, site seeing, massages and maybe a few too many cocktails in the hotel room ;) .

On the 25th I said goodbye to the ladies and took the night train up to Beijing along with Sandra and her friend Melanie to meet up with Jen and Cody. We took the night train (14 hours) and that was pretty fun. We were stared at a lot, got to hear a lot of snoring and have a few wind-tunnel-esque bathroom experiences, but for the price it was a steal of a journey! In all seriousness though it really wasn’t so bad. As dutiful tourists in Beijing we hit the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, plus the old AND new summer palace – in three days! Phew! We were happy to return to the warmer Shanghai weather and I have since shown them the what I consider the highlights (again, mostly eating, shopping and massages, with a couple of cultural things thrown in for good measure).

Peppered between visitors have been some tearful goodbyes with Simon, Sandra and Christian, not to mention loads of goodbyes to other friends who have slowly trickled out of Shanghai. Even though this is exchange round 2, I still find myself surprised at the intensity friendships can build in these short-term situations. I am missing my three Germans quite a lot and have been subjecting poor Jen and Cody to countless numbers of nostalgic had-to-be-there stories about our adventures in China. I am already obsessing over when I can make it to Germany next…tentative plans: German Karneval post graduation :D.

So tomorrow is Bangkok where Cody, Jen and I will set out on a two month adventure around South East Asia. Tentatively on the list is Thailand (not so tentative :D), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but we might not make it to all, or maybe even make it further depending on where the wind blows us. I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen with this little blog as I don’t know what kind of Internet access we’ll have along the way or what my laziness levels are going to be, but I would have the desire to keep posting so we’ll see what happens.

For those of you who are particularly dedicated  (or particularly worried in the case of my mama), feel free to check out Cody’s blog at codyinasia.ca…he’s a bit of a better and more regular blogger than me (at least so far!).

Hope you’re all well at home, until next time!!

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