Nihao!

(The View from my room)

Hello, hello from Shanghai!

I don’t even know where to start. There is just so much. I think, for now, I’ll mostly just write about the places and stuff and get into otherthings in a later post. —— Writing this whole thing was such a pain because for every little thing there is just so much I could say. Not to mention stupid bloggers formatting issues... ten times worse than word.

I arrived here late Sunday night, after a bit of a shaky start with United and then continued shakiness with Delta. I somehow got lucky and got here without too much hassle.

It’s just entirely unreal being here. It’s so different and yet not at all. It’s odd because China to me was not a real place. It was a location I would read about or hear about, not an actual physical place that people live… surprise surprise, it is a real place.

My host family is beyond nice. It’s a wife and husband, and I think a son but he’s not here right now. They don’t speak any English, which has made for some interesting times. Meaning, lots of gesturing and repeating what they say, followed by them laughing at me. But I’ve already learned so much. That can’t be helped given that they quiz me constantly. Every time I eat they make me repeat the names of the food, times of the day, numbers, the words for today, tomorrow and yesterday and I don't know how many others.

My host mom put her head in her hands when I came in the first night when her husband obviously told her I don’t speak any Mandarin haha. I think it's the dads mission to teach me Mandarin. (I don't know they're names thanks to the language barrier.) I’ve also since learned that I am the only homestay student who has never taken Chinese.

I live in a fairly large room in an apartment building on the seventh floor right off of campus. It’s fantastic because my walk is just long enough for me to enjoy the city a little before walking onto campus (It’s a 5-10 minute walk to the buildings where I go to class).

The campus is completely separate from the city, which is amazing. It’s so quiet and pretty compared to the constant honking and throngs of people outside of campus.

The traffic is also insane, everyone honks. Everyone drives like there are no rules, which from what I can tell, there aren’t.

At the back gate of campus is the oldest surviving neighborhood in Shanghai, built in the 1930’s I believe. It’s full of people walking in the streets and tons of stalls selling everything you can’t imagine. And I say that seriously cause I don’t know what half of it is. There are places selling dvd’s and software. Giant barrels of crawfish. IP cards (still don’t know what those are, some type of phone card I think). All kinds of food, most of it unrecognizable, some of it apparently is rat meat and the like… we’re told to avoid those places. Though I know people who have eaten at them, have been fine, and loved it.

Everyone is so nice. I’m excited to be able to speak a little Chinese so I’m more able to just walk around explore and buy stuff. It’s difficult to explore when you literally don’t speak anything. It’s even more difficult than that, because there are no lines. Period. Just not in the culture. You just have to get the cashiers attention to buy anything. Other wise you could actually stand a foot away from the cashier for hours while people jump in front of you to do their own business.

You can drink the water despite what I’d been told. But there are specific taps. Like in my apartment there are two taps you can drink from and two you can’t. But you can still use the undrinkable taps to brush your teeth.

What's funny is that the things I have the most difficulty with aren’t the gesturing or speaking but the smaller things like money. I really have no concept of how much stuff is. Everything is really cheap. I know that. But I don’t really understand it if that makes sense haha. It’s 6.5 yuan for 1 American dollar. BUT… haha yeah. I’ll figure it out. My other issue is that because of the language barrier I somehow miss little things said in English. I’m still not sure how it keeps happening. Luckily I’ve made friends with two people who are essentially fluent in Mandarin and one who is fluent in Shanghainese (completely different language), which has been super helpful. Without them I would be that really obnoxious student who is permanently lost and not where they’re supposed to be.

The program mostly consists of business majors because it is actually a business program. Though there is a small group of people who are not business but they’re a part of a different CIEE program for advanced language students. It’s been nice that they’ve sort of combined our programs.

This is one of those weird language gaps. I’m not sure if it’s a completely separate program or if it's a sub-section of the program I’m in.

Speaking of, I’m actually one of only two students from the Business program that got to be in a homestay. Not sure how that happened but I feel pretty lucky.

Finally…

Today it poured. The heaviest rain I think I’ve ever experienced. It just bucketed for a good two hours and just like that it was over.

We received our textbooks today and took a small tour around campus that ended up at this HUGE mall to let kids buy cellphones and plans there. I didn't because I already bought one while I was home.

The mall was HUGE, I think I said that. At least seven stories maybe eight or nine. And was just… so big. Every store you can think of and every other store. It pretty much had every mall store, designer store and brand store I’ve ever seen and that was not even half of all the stores. What scares me is that I'm quite sure it was a regular old mall not some hugely famous Chinese mall haha.

So that’s it for now. I’ll write more later!

Zàijiàn!

(Statue of Chairman Mao at the Center of Campus. Not a guy you make fun of, at all. Apparently a student was almost arrested for seeming to mock the statue. He raised his arm to stop another student from taking the photo they were going to take and the police jumped on it.)