The Apartment!

The following is a layout of what my apartment looks like. When you first enter there is a Chinese style dining room set that sits six on the left side, and a sofa, two chairs, a bookshelf, tv and coffee table on



the right side. From the dining room area you can exit to the back porch, which is huge. The outskirts of the porch are surrounded by flower beds with roses and weeds. Eventually I will either weed it myself (yuck), or hire an aiyi (which means 'aunt', but really is a cleaning lady) to help me. Past the chairs in the living room is a small back balcony, about the size of Melita and Giangi's balcony. I will buy lawn furniture soon. If you walk towards the dining room area there is a small galley-style kitchen, but there are sliding doors that are similar to the dining room and living room furniture. So two of the three can be opened for a more casual atmosphere, or three can be closed for a more formal atmosphere. If yo bedroom, a bathroom with a shower, toilet, sink, and washing machine will be on your right. It is decorated in a reddish color. If you continue straight instead of turning left, you will enter the guest bedroom which has a full size bed. If you turn to the right, you will see wall-to-wall closet space on both sides down a small corridor (maybe 6 ft in length) that leads into the second bathroom, that has a sink, bathroom, and bathtub. Instead of going down the corridor to the second bathroom, by continuing forward you'll reach the sliding door to my bedroom, which has a king sized bed, closets on the far side, a beautiful bay-type window on the opposite side (same side as the small front porch), with an old style desk and small trunk type thing to store stuff in. The bedding was given to me when I first arrived, but I still need to buy new bedding that is actually aesthetically pleasing. I amu walk towards the guest on the first floor which is good because even though I don't have the skyline view, I don't have to haul up 100+ steps everyday just to get out of the house. (I will take ones of the porch and balcony in due time.)

Pictures are as follows:

Computer meltdown

So, the difference between the grades 2 and 3 and Preschool-1st is that the 2nd and 3rd graders are supposed to use mobile laptops computers, stored at a "mobile" laptop station. The station is too heavy to move, nor are the computers stored in an area with wheels. So grades 2-3 have to go to one of the third grade classrooms and properly remove the computer at the beginning of class, and then put it back at the end of class. This is a bit disruptive for Ms. Rowe, our third grade teacher whose classroom stores the laptops. Instead, the second grade is using my computer lab because it will give the kids more time to actually use the computer.

The network went down this morning because there was a power outage last night. What this meant was that at 7:30 (for my 8:20 class), I tried from 7:30-7:45/7:50 to get any of the laptops up and running, but to no avail. I couldn't find lessons to do because I have no access to the internet, and I couldn't access any computer games because they are all stored on the network. So, I improvised. Third graders came into my classroom and just worked on Microsoft word. I got an idea of their typing skills, and those who are more capable typers played with fonts, sizes, and colors. The difficulty was that not all of the computers in the lab had word stored on them. This was quite enjoyable to find out 5 minutes before class.

Second graders played in paint and created their own images in paint. Luckily by the time first grade was up to bat, the network miraculously went back up and I just had them play a game.

Now I'm going to take a class picture of each section (instead of individual head shots), and I'm assigning the children seats, so I will know who is where. Kids will know where to go in the beginning of class, and the routines will be enforced. Also, I can keep the disruptive kids separated from each other too.

I took some pictures of my apartment and may post them later today if I have time. Does anyone actually read this thing?

We're going downtown

So apparently I can access this blog from my school internet, but it is blocked on the internet I actually pay for at home. This is unfortunate.

This weekend Laura visited from Beijing. I had been looking forward to seeing her since I got here. It's really nice to hang out with someone that I've known for a long time. Friday afternoon after work Laura met up with me. I borrowed a bike from the Garretts, and they were so generous to let me use it because as a result Laura and I biked all around the area. We originally didn't have the extra bike, so we walked back to my apartment, which was a bit uncomfortable because of the heat, but after the bike travel was much easier. At night we explored a place called Zhoupo, which is this very Chinese area with lots of street food, shops, fair-type games, and the like. We had dinner at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I bought the Harry Potter DVD but unfortunately it was in Chinese so it was very difficult to understand.

Saturday morning we woke up at around 7:30, and had breakfast around 8:15/8:30. We biked down this canal path toward the school, and there was a stand that sold breakfast pancakes. Afterwards we took a cab to the Longyanlu subway stop, where we met one of Laura's mother's friends from Shanghai who wanted to show us around. Her name is Shirley, or Liu jie jie. We first saw Nanjing Road, which is this long pedestrian street that has many stores and glows with neon lights at night. It was still pretty crowded during the day, and of course 10+ different people came up to us trying to sell us bags and watches. Then we went to the YuYuan gardens which was more overpriced touristy shops with swarms of people, and many western food chains. I wasn't very impressed. If we wanted to see the actual garden, the cost would have been 50 yuan, and the entrance to see the temple was 30 yuan. Then we stopped at a smaller random market that was a lot of fun! Following that, Shirley wanted us to go to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, but that was back 4 subway stops and a cab ride from where we were originally, so Laura and I just suggested we stay in the Puxi area and explore instead of back-tracking. So instead of the Technology Museum, we took a cab to go to Wen Miao (Confucius temple). Surrounding this temple was a Chinese book market, and the street was swarmed with little stands that sold silly cute trinkets. The Wen Miao temple was absolutely amazing. There was a main shrine, and outside of it was incense. This picture is an indoor area with an open porch looking at the water. Artists, musicians and the like would perform on the porch, and people would sit at the round table inside (which had optimum breezes passing through). Simply beautiful.

Following that we had a late lunch and went to Sun Yatsen's former residence. His house was huge, and the wallspace that introduced the landmark claimed Sun's "absolute love for the country, and lack of interest in personal wealth." Obviously this was exemplified by his beautiful house. It reminded me a bit of Mount Vernon in Virginia (not as large nor was his house a plantation), but the main museum just had random pieces of paper with people's signatures on it as well as many photographs with captions where the person was almost always revered. Oh, China.

Also of note, when we say something like "So far I haven't gotten sick in Shanghai..>pause>... yet" Then you say "knock on wood" and knock on wood or your head, there are actually two equivalent Chinese phrases. So despite the obvious linguistic and cultural differences, I was surprised that such a similarity existed. Who knew?

We wanted to go to the propaganda museum/poster store, but it was already closed by the time we were done with Sun Yatsen. So we just wandered around some posh central areas of Shanghai that had the Starbucks, "fashionable" clothing, etc. Shirley had told us we were meeting with her boss, Andrew, for dinner. So at 7 we ate at this restaurant called Zen. I tried this chicken wing with rice inside. The dish had a very rich flavor. In China the chicken wings are more expensive and desirable than chicken breast. I tried a tofu dish where the tofu was really like a bag (tied with a piece of noodle) that contained various veggies and the like. I also had grapefruit, some type of special soup where they let meat, carrots, and corn flavor the broth, then they bring the plate of the stuff that was in the soup to the table. But you're not supposed to eat that food because it has already been used. They bring it to you to show that they are not re-using it for something else. I also tried a few new desserts, and really spent a lot of the day speaking Chinese.

When we were done, Shirley went home and Andrew walked with us towards the Bund. The Bund is the part of the Huangpu river that bends quickly, and the riverside is surrounded by Manhattan-like skyscrapers with lots of lights. Walkways are on both sides of the river, with tourists and vendors abound. The Bund (on the West side) is known for some relatively old art deco architecture (of France, I believe), from the 20s and 30s. The east side (Pudong area) hosts the infamous Pearl Tower and the JinMao tower. We were going to take a boat across the river, but we missed the last one. I'll let these few pictures speak for themselves (I took all of these pictures posted in this entry):
We then came home. I'm not really sure if Andrew and Shirley are our friends, or if they just felt obligated to show Laura a good time because her mother helped them get jobs. I'd like to go out and do things with them, but not because they feel obliged to do so. We'll see what happens.

Sunday I went to a local market with Laura and bought veggies, noodles, rice, soy sauce, yogurt, oil, salt pepper, ginger, garlic- all for about 5 dollars US. Afterwards we went back into town and went to the JinMao tower, which is actually taller and cheaper than the Pearl Tower. The Pearl Tower costs 50 yuan per level, so 150 total, whereas at the JinMao tower is only 50 yuan to the 88th floor. Laura and I went to the 87th floor for free, and just went to a nice bar there where we each ordered a fancy (read: expensive) drink. It was so worth it though because we sat there looking at the view for at least an hour or two. Here's an artsy picture from inside:


Following JinMao tower Laura went to the train station, and I met up with my friend Lindi. We went to this market called Qipu (read: Cheap), where there are a lot of products for wholesale. The vendors there were very aggressive, and they'd almost yell at you for not buying their product. But once they said that, there was no way I'd buy from them because I refuse to feel guilty for making a decision about how to spend my own money. Anyway! After we got through the main entrance (and after like 3 or 4 people were following/hackling us), we finally got to look around. I found a beautiful dress (that they told me was silk). They tried to start off at 200 yuan, but then I looked at the tag and saw it was polyester and something else, so I told them that since it wasn't real silk, why pay 200? I ended up not buying the dress because they insisted polyester was a type of man made silk, or something stupid like that, but Lindi bought two nice shirts. We then had dinner at a Hong Kong chain restaurant, where we had duck, some sort of vegetable, Hong Kong style steamed buns, and a friend thing with crab inside. And after that, of course, ice cream.

All in all it was a pretty great weekend.

School, school school

So today I taught some second graders how to go on the internet. Some of them have never logged on-line before. I took them to a crayola website to explain how there are advertisements on-line as well as on TV, in magazines, newspapers etc. Those who had never used it before were amazed, and even took home the little instruction sheet I made so they can check out the website on their own!

I totally conquered the preschoolers today- they're so tiny I can't believe it! Today I also taught the same pre-k section I first had on Wednesday, and their behavior was 10000 times better. I have one more section of pre-k, followed by an assembly, and then Laura should be in Shanghai soon. If not I may play ultimate Frisbee with the other teachers and/or go to a bar or something- I'm not sure yet. I'm look forward to exploring Shanghai with Laura- we're going to do many touristy things hopefully, and we'll look all around the Puxi area.

I am also starting to learn the Shanghai dialect. I know "Hi" "How are you?" "Good" "Thank you" and "Goodbye". A good start!

Winners and losers

Tallies are as follows:
Me: 1 3rd Grade: 0
Me: 1 2nd Grade: 0
Me: 1 1st Grade: 0
Me: 1 Kindergarten: 0
Me: 0 Pre-K: 1 (A game of duck, duck, goose went horribly wrong!)
Preschool will be determined tomorrow.

Here are some classroom pictures:

First day of classes

So I've taught three classes already this morning, and I think the kids will not be that much of a problem. I taught third grade, then second, followed by first. At 1pm I'll be teaching Pre-K, followed by K, and then I will have bus duty followed by a staff meeting. Maybe I'll buy knitting needles and yarn and knit during faculty meetings. Any other suggestions/hobbies I can do to pass the time while listening?

Yesterday was really busy-- I had the morning to prep. I made a welcome letter because there was an open house at the school from 1-3pm, but zero parents stopped in my room to talk to me... a shame really because I made 40 copies of my welcome letter which just seemed to be a waste of paper. The server went down yesterday as well so we lost access to internet, phones, copying, etc. I'm sure that was very difficult for the administrators.

Lindi and I went to a street that is about 4 min bike from campus that is lined with real Chinese restaurants. We ended up going to the crawl fish place again, but this time I had dumplings (YES!!), a broccoli dish in some sort of broth, and a tofu dish that was in a pink/red/orange sauce with lots of onions-- that last dish was wayy to big for the two of us but quite tasty. Lindi lives in Puxi so she doesn't use a bike here. To cut down on time, Lindi sat side-saddle on the back part of my bike.

Imagine that but with two adults, and the person sitting with their feet hanging off of one side of the bike. It's rather difficult to do because the weight is distributed on the bike un-evenly, but I eventually got the hang of it.

I also had the pleasure of learning a few phrases in the Shanghai dialect. Hello is "nong huoa", how are you is "nog huoa va?" Good is "huo-aa", and thank you is "xia ya". The tones are different so it's extremely difficult but one of the women (Gu Li, I think) will teach me a few words either every day or a few words week. That's a good start, right?

I still don't have internet access at home (GRR), and I think the guy from the school may be ripping us off. He made us give him 310kuai to install the internet, and he's taking FOREVER to actually do it. Very annoying.

Oh, also! A Shanghai man I met on the plane from Philly to Shanghai called me yesterday to see how I am settling in! He is really nice, has a wife and a kid, and works both in Shanghai and Philadelphia for his job. Maybe he can suggest a good place for me to buy sheets. And install cable and internet...

Poked and prodded

So last night we went to a really local restaurant near the first veggie and fruit market we went to. I went with three of my friends, and they wanted to order crawl fish. I really didn't want any, but I tried it and crawl fish is SO GOOD! You eat the crawl fish like a lobster/shrimp in the sense that you break the fish in the midsection, then you open up the tail and eat the meat there. Bonnie and Simon also told me that you can suck the stomach (the other half) out, but I wasn't that adventurous. We had 2kg of crawl fish, 2 plates of veggies, another plate of some veggie, four bowls of rice, and two things of beer for 88kuai, about 22/person (almost 3 dollars). What a great meal.

This morning I had the pleasure of waking up at 5:45am to get to the school at 7 to depart for my wonderful medical checkup. Alice also had an appointment, so we took the van where we went to the Hongqiao campus (in Puxi) to pick up a few more people who also had appointments. It took us about an 45 min to get to Hongqiao, and then we got to the medical center around 9am.

Talk about Chinese efficiency. They had us fill out paperwork (as always), then wait to be called. When called they asked a few questions, took a picture of me, then ushered me to a second room to pay the bill. I panicked a bit because they were going to charge me 700kuai and wanted me to use my credit card, when I had never been told that I needed to pay for my own examination! Eventually everything worked out though. In the third room I was given a hospital gown thing, put slipper things over my shoes, and stored my clothes in the locker. This was followed by about 5 tests: bloodwork, an ultrasound(??!), EEG, x-ray, and an eye exam. I interacted with about 10 different people. Even though there really was no real patient-doctor bonding, my time spent there was a heck of a lot quicker than any time I've spent at my own doctor's, or at the hospital.

I've spent most of today doing lots and lots of work to prep for tomorrow- we will have an open house for parents tomorrow afternoon, and classes start on Wednesday! Laura is coming to visit sometime Friday, and she'll stay in my spare bedroom. We may see Cirque du Soleil this weekend. Also on the note of performances, Geoff's tour of 42nd street opens Sept 5! I'm so excited about that as well!

Also, I'm going to be in Bali from Saturday, Sept 29-Thurs Oct 4. My friend Linde and I may travel somewhere else from Oct 4-Oct7, but we're not sure yet.


That's all that's new here!

Markets galore!

This morning I woke up at 6:45am to meet up with some of the other teachers to go to the Flower market which is near the subway station. I still have not yet taken the subway, but I'm beginning to get the lay of the land in the neighborhood that I live in.

The flower market is made of two halves- on one side of the main street they sell very large plants, and the other side consists of smaller plants. Many teachers wanted to buy large plants to decorate their classrooms, but I thought it was a bit difficult to get large plants tranferred to the school. Plus I teach technology, and my room is already decorated.

I bought a variety of plants-- one rubber tree, bright pink flowers, light pink flowers, a pot with different colors, a hanging plant, a pepper plant, a white lily, and three more random green plants. I think I paid 20+3+3+2+6+5+10+3+3+7 = 62kuai, which is a little less than ten dollars.

Following that I relaxed a bit in my room, and then around 11am my friend Simon and I decided to go exploring on our bikes. He knew of one market, and I knew of two more, but I had never been them. I was just told the general direction. The first market we found was a fruit, veggie, fish and meat market. It wasn't very busy because we were there at an awkward hot midday time, but some of these veggies are so beautifully fresh. We tried speaking to one of the ladies at a fruit stand, and I tried a loganberry, and found out the word for Mango is mang guo, an almost literal translation of the English word.

Following the fruit market we found yet /another/ fruit, veggie, and meat market which wasn't nearly as cool. Following that, Simon and I came across yet another market, but this one was more of a street market with many stores, bakeries, etc. almong the lines of the street. Next to the third market was a large shopping mall complex (complete with a grocery store). It started to rain so we went inside. There we found a tea store and the man there speaks excellent English. We spent almost an hour with him drinking tea. He let us try a jasmine flower tea which had a closed flower that bloomed once the tea was ready in the hot water-- it was beautiful and the tea tasted very good. Simon also bought some wall decorations of "painted bamboo" for the walls of his apartment.

After that I heard about another (very local) market. We had to bike about 20 minutes to find it and there wasn't a single foreigner there. They had this HUGE pagoda style building that was clearly built in the past 15 years, and along with the "old" architecture were all of these random stores with hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people walking all around the area! There were also local food vendor carts, one that sold jiaozi (dumplings) and another that sold xiaolongbao (Shanghai style small steamed buns). SO GOOD. Then we found a carousel (??!), and finally we decided to eat more xiaolongbao. When we got our second helping (10 of them for 2 kuai, which is like 16 cents), there were these people dressed in dragon costumes dancing around while fire-crackers were going off around them as a band played. As we walked back to where we parked our bikes, there was a random open truck driving around with a band inside playing authentic Chinese music. What was the occasion? Only God knows.

Seriously though, this has been by far one of my favorite days in China ever. Just biking around, seeing, speaking and exploring this area has been incrediably worthwhile thus far. I can't wait to bike out to other areas!

An IKEA in China?

Let's talk about big business. China is a growing country, and the economic boom has created a plethora of opportunities to make money very quickly. Working at an international school is interesting because there are many people from all over the world, but at the same time many people here do not seem to want to try local food, let alone learn the language.

The neighborhood in Pudong that I live in, Kangqiao, is relatively new and not as developed as central downtown Shanghai. What annoyed me a bit about last summer were the tourists that almost seemed to demand Westernized everything. While I understand that a McDonald's or KFC may provide food that one is used to, why travel half-way across the country, or live in a new country, and then expect/want the Starbucks, etc. Here one of the teachers is campaigning for a Starbucks to set up a cafe in our neighborhood, and I am really amazed at the support it seems to have. Since I don't drink coffee I honestly would prefer not to have one in the area, but the other thing that bothers me a bit is that establishing these Western chains really can further isolate the ex-pats from the local population, and I really think that is a shame.

On another note, I took a van with some other teachers to IKEA today. It took about an hour to get there, and it was in Puxi, the area on the east side of the river. Puxi is drastically different than Kangqiao-- skyscrapers everywhere, McDonald's, Starbucks, etc. And I know I just preached about trying to be integrated with the population at large, and then started a story about IKEA, but it seems like people think Kangqiao will be more civilized or something if there is a Starbucks out here... Thoughts?

I'm here!

So, like many people I know, I am starting a blog. I look forward to updating you on my life here in Pudong, Shanghai. 浦东，上海。 I arrived here last Saturday, so I've been here almost a week. I've been so busy with work that it has been hard to get much else done, but I will update you accordingly. Hopefully my next post will have pictures.

The decorations in my classroom, that I skillfully color coordinated and organized, are falling down, unfortunately, so I must tend to them with packing tape instead of masking tape. Wish me luck!