more or lessica...

I got into work an hour and a half late today, if that gives you any clue about the kind of night I had. Ugh, this town has a way of turning an innocent drink with colleagues into "free-flow $7 all you can drink for two hours ready GO!!" Sorry mom, dad, grandma. I know how you hate to hear about my drinking. But to be honest this is worth a mention because there are few places in the world with THIS many expats who circulate in the same bars on any and all nights of the week. It's like being a member of a huge and intimidatingly well-dressed club, made up of 1 part nerds, 1 part business nerds, 2 parts euro-snobbery (of the French variety) and 1 part frat party. Throw in some cheap Chinese beer and you never know what will come out. Last night I ended up lost at some club with lots of rich skinny Chinese girls, where I couldn't find my recently friended French boy with glasses (of the nerd-Euro variety) so I stumbled out to a cab and went home. And now here we are. I'm considering a nap on my lap top.

My fake Converse AllStars are falling apart. Their rate of deterioration is much faster than real ones, in almost direct proportion to the difference in cost. 1/4 the price, 1/4 the lifespan. Holes in your shoes don't really become a problem until it starts raining, which it did in Shanghai on Monday. Which was also the day I managed to lock myself out of the apartment for four hours without an umbrella. Man oh MAN it's hard getting a taxi in the rain in this town.

I'm pretty sure the Shanghai water is making my hair fall out. Someone warned me about this back in August and I didn't believe it. But I think it's true.

I've forgotten what it feels like to watch TV shows on a normal broadcast. It's always internet or DVDs. I miss cable and DVR (and Jeopardy!) Oh but we DO have a smashing Amazing Race knock-off show called Shanghai Rush, complete with REAL Shanghai expats saying annoying things and being dumb.

Facebook has started putting little notes on my homepage like "You haven't said anything in a while. Why don't you send so-and-so a message?" I tell Facebook to stop teasing an internet cripple and mind it's own business.

I had my first house party last night! But it started pouring rain right before start time and loads of people flaked. But it was fun anyway. Yay I have friends.

Exciting news! Everybody's favorite goofy-eared president is coming to town! The Obamas will be in China next week for a whopping three whole days! One of which will be spent in Shanghai. It feels less like a politician is visiting, and more like the pope or santa. Chinese people are STOKED on Obama. I'm trying to get my hands on some Oba-Mao paraphernalia. Try not to think too hard about all the references tangled up in that one.

Well it decided to be winter again this week and apparently I'm not the only one who can't figure out how to heat our school. My fingers are going numb so that's all for today.

PSYCH! Not only is it definitely still fall, but a super duper shufu (comfortable) one at that! It's a warm and balmy 25 degrees Celsius today. I'd pretend I know immediately and exactly what that is in Fahrenheit, but I still have to google convert it... 77 degrees!! Instead of all this pesky conversion hassle, I've instead decided to memorize the clever reference points listed here.

Schizophrenic Chinese weather aside, good news!! Anybody looking for an excellent reason to move to Shanghai, look no further. Disney is coming! They've decided to open their fourth Disneyland outside of the US, and they're doing it in Shanghai's affluent backyard, Pudong!* I just have to hold out four more years and I'm in! Apparently this has been in the works for (20!?)years, and the English language blogs are abuzz with the thrill of it all.

Nobody is more excited, I'm sure, than Mickey and Mini Mikey and Mimi.

And even more good news everybody! I'm coming home for a visit next month, December 7th - 22nd. Why not Christmas you ask? Many reasons, the most important of which is I have to work the 26th. Anyway, I'll be in Spokane with the gran gran for most of that time, but I'll spend a few days in Seattle right before I leave I think. So mark your calendars...

* I live in Puxi, along with everybody else, on the West side of the Huangpu River. Pudong is the dead business stretch to the East (where that big phallic tower with the pink orbs resides) and although some boring rich expats would argue its merits, we all know it's super dull** and inconvenient to get to.

**Unless your hobbies include rolling around on piles of money in fancy private villas.

Nothing much to report on the China front. The last week or two have been boring, punctuated by brief happy home-cooked Italian meals by my friend Aurelio. Beers at home have replaced beers at bars, which can probably be equally attributed to both frugality and laziness. Someone finally shut off the moon cake faucet, so the family I'm tutoring for are now showering me with Macaroons and chocolate instead. It's like they're paying me to gain weight.

I was excited for fall in this city - every street is lined with giant leaf-laden trees. But to my disappointment it appears that when these trees change, their leaves simply turn a sickly green/yellow and drop defeated to the ground. No brilliant reds and oranges. I'm toying with a day trip out of the city. It would be my first in almost four months.

So! Tomorrow I turn the big two-five and to celebrate I think we're doing all-you-can-eat-and-drink sushi/saki/beer. Or something to that effect. Then off to the YACHT concert (a band from Portland! Holla!) Should be a good day, especially considering it's starting with Skype chats and mimosas. If any of you wish to partake, look me up around 8pm PST. Skype name: jessica.colwell

Side note: If any of you have Facebooked me in the last few months, I've pretty much lost the ability to interact through that site (GFW, GO DIE) but snubbed you aren't! Email me. It's archaic, but it works.

Posting has been sparse these past few weeks. I would blame the National Holiday, but I spent most of my time off sitting around Shanghai in the sun doing as little as possible. And by sun, I mean ACTUAL sunshine, not just whatever hazy light managed to make it through all the smog and down to the sidewalk. Considering how rarely we see one another in this town, I’ve begun to feel a deep Peter-Pan-like affection for my own shadow.

Autumn in Shanghai is heaps better than summer. September brought immediate and considerable temperature drops. I’ve donned my first zip-up of the season and I’m already planning out what kind of coat to have made at the fabric market. No more profuse sweating and avoidance of any and all outdoor activity.

As far as National Day is concerned, all that build up and psychotic security tightening resulted in one huge, multi-million dollar, super boring two-hour-long display of military might. I found one time-lapse of the big show condensed down to about 3 minutes, and it’s basically the only version worth watching. Also one of my favorite comedy news podcasts The Bugle summed it up nicely if you care to give a listen.

Another exciting update is that I got myself a second job tutoring this SUPER loaded French-Chinese boy. His dad manufactures his own line of women’s shoes and handbags for Paris (apparently his brand is kind of a big deal, I forgot already but I’ll find out the name.) Anyway the gig is amazing. Perks so far include bottles of French wine, Italian espresso, countless mooncakes, and a private BMW escort. And they pay well.

If I haven't mentioned it already, there's a pretty decent blog I follow here called The Shanghaiist. If you're ever curious about the going-ons of this town and/or country, it's probably the most entertaining newsroll I've found to date. Highlights this week include imaginary Swedish lesbian villages and Jackie Chan being super fascist-y.

Teacher's Day in China was last week so Wednesday we were told there would be an "outdoor activity" for all the teachers in the Pearson-Longman schools (12 campuses in Shanghai = loads of teachers.) They were taking us on a trip to Suzhou! (pretty town near shanghai) Dispite free travel incentive, I debated extensively over going because none of my teacher buddies could make it. I went anyway.

Wrongest decision of my life.

Firstly, they didn't tell us until Tuesday afternoon that we would be catching the buses at 6:50am Wednesday morning. FML. So I stay out until about 1am, drag myself home and get maybe four hours of sleep, then hop on a tour bus with about 50 Chinese teachers and 4 foreigners. We sit through painfully orchestrated get-to-know-you games on the bus (impossible considering the language divide) and two hours later it looks to me like we're getting close. Pretty scenery, mountains, temples, lakes, and the like.

Bus finally stops and we all pile off. I know things have gone terribly awry when all I can see are horses, camels, fake Teepees, and Chinese people wearing cowboy hats. We had arrived at Cowboy Town.

At first I'm giggling and enjoying the bizarre turn of events with the other foreign teachers. Then they file us into a big conference room where we're forced to sit through a long and extremely boring meeting (often accompanied by singing or poems.) The rest of the day took a turn for the worst.

I had inadvertently and voluntarily signed up for my first corporate team building experience. It stopped being funny immediately after lunch when they forced us into teams and started yelling directions over a megaphone in Chinese. To give you an example of how painful this process was, it took them almost an hour just to get us organized in teams and lined up correctly. My Chinese colleagues looked disheartened when I bowed out after that first terrible hour. Out of about 200 teachers (12 foreigners) there were two of us that took the low road. I regret nothing. Toward the end they FINALLY gave us some free time to go boating or go-karting but at that point our spirits were so crushed that we all just sat exhausted and depressed drinking beer at the cowboy lodge, discussing how exactly we had been tricked into wasting our day off.

I would say it DID result in some cohesiveness between the foreign teachers. Those of us that went (only like 12 out of probably 50) now reference Cowboy Town with the kind of solemn gravity reserved for disaster victims or wartime veterans.

The other notable experience from last week was a major local soccer match - Shanghai Shenhua vs. Beijing Guoan. Shanghai soccer is notoriously bad, both for the low quality of play and for the general lack of understanding by the spectators. This game, however, was supposed to be about as good as it gets, considering Shanghai and Beijing have a long-running rivalry (for obvious reasons.)

So I organized a group of about ten people to go, and spent the first twenty minutes of the game desperately searching for tickets. Eventually we located them at the ticket booth ("no duh?" you say? no, nothing is obvious in china...) where I was nearly crushed to death in the mob of about 70 drunken middle-aged Chinese men scrambling to stuff their money through the tiny window slots. I think I elbowed somebody in the face.

The game itself was brilliant!! The crowd ooh-ed and ahh-ed, screamed and booed to practically every kick of the ball. And I learned a pretty good curse word. The equivalant of calling somebody an eff-ing SeeYouNextTuesday. The entire stadium was constantly screaming it at the Beijing team, then after the match they were all outside, still screaming/cheering, and burning Beijing jerseys (even though it was a tie game!)

Obviously in the future I will be attending as often as possible.

From age 8 to 18 I had a series of exactly three best friends. In the last two weeks two out of the three got married, and the third one is now engaged. I was about to begin some kind of crisis-laden self/life reevaluation... but then instead I didn't.

My favorite friend here so far is a Chinese girl named Ada Lui. This was a little weird for me at first because the pronunciation is eerily close to my grandmother's name - Aida Lou.

Anyway, so last night Ada and I decided to go for massages, China Style. Which means leaving the house around 10pm, stoping for an unplanned $4 shampoo/haircut because Ada thinks the place looks cute, then around 11:30pm we finally embark on what turned into my strangest massage experience to date. The two guys that gave us our $9, 60min full-body massages spent the entire time trying/failing to talk to us in English, which resulted in Ada and I constantly wracked by fits of laughter. Afterward they fed us free dumplings. Oh, and we were forcedpriviledged to wear some absolutely stunning sheep pajamas that for some reason said "cheese" and "mouse" on them:

We came out of the experience sore but happy, and with an unbinding verbal agreement to teach one of the masseuses English in exchange for Kung Fu lessons (he trained at Shao Lin temple since like age 6.)

Oh and look what I spotted on the bus last week!

it was a nice touch of home on my commute to work.

My travel sized toothpaste from the flight over has finally run out so I ran to Tesco the other day for a new tube. Being a loyal Crest Kid 4Lyfe, I found myself facing a decision I never anticipated:

Diamonds, Pearls, Crystals, or Ice?? My first instinct was obviously Diamonds and I went with it.

Here's a little visual treat I stumbled by in the metro the other day:

"TIME IS (animal) LOVE"

Also I must acknowledge and thank my good friend Jessica for a warning she sent me two weeks ago that went something like this: "Don't go on any Chinese carnival rides or anything because I was watching this one show and you could get decapitated or something."

Last Friday I was reading the Shanghai Daily and came an article about the "soft opening" of the new Happy Valley theme park in Shanghai. Here are some of the terrifying highlights:

Some people were stuck by the park’s star free-fall ride midair for minutes. Technicians later found out the short-circuit was caused by a metal pen cap dropped from a visitor’s pocket.

Countless small accidents, hours of waiting, bad food and poor facilities sparked outrage among thousands of visitors, many of whom had waited for hours in the rain before the gate opened.

A sign board fell on three visitors’ head, but the park’s first aid centre has not been completed yet.

The park’s doctor ran from one spot to another to treat the injured.

Last week I had a couch surfer staying with me from Brazil. He desperately wanted to try jellyfish (or at least the craziest seafood we could find) so we went to a local fish market where you pick out all the seafood you want (live) then walk around the corner to a restaurant where they cook it for you. Unfortunately jellyfish is simply not in season. We decided on some other creatures, and I was a bit apprehensive considering these were the options:

Result? DELICIOUS. Except the worm things, because there really isn't much to them once they're cooked.

Last Friday they took away my perfect schedule. August is my school's busiest month so I kind of saw it coming. Now I don't have ANY days off until like August 24th. But it's not so bad. I'm teaching a 3-week summer program with teenagers, probably the oldest students I'll teach at my school. It's fun and funny. One of them calls himself Eminem (grandma, you can look him up online and see why this is funny - he's a rapper.)

Last Friday I went to a party with my roommates at somebody's apartment. The cops came by like three times telling us to be quiet. So turns out house parties are the same everywhere.

Shanghai has changed a lot since the last time I was here. I'm happy to report most people now know how NOT to cut in line and usually when people spit it's with about 60% less audible buildup.  However they still like to let their kids pee wherever. They just pop off the kids pants and dangle their little bottoms over the ground until things are taken care of.

Things I never expected would determine the quality of my day:

1) How many people (usually middle aged men) race (and beat) me to the open seat on the subway.

2) How much urine is on the seats and floors of my school's bathrooms. The children really haven't mastered western toilets.

Tonight I'm going out with coworkers for the first time. I haven't really spent any time with the other teachers yet so I'm looking forward to it. I'm just a little nervous about the chosen venue - Mexican.(yes, in China)

Here are some fun photos...

my tiny room. the bed slides all the way under that bench thing, so it's not QUITE as cramped as it looks:

my kids:

health inspection:

the ladies out to play:

digs:

For all of you struggling through the heat in Seattle right now, I totally feel you. For the first few weeks I was here, there were more "feels like 112" days than I'd like to remember. It felt kind of like when it's a really hot day AND you're standing next to a car idleing it's heat all over you, except that it's everywhere all the time. Thankfully for me, it's been raining here for the past week or two. I'll take the rain over the heat any day.

Over the weekend I made my first Chinese friend. Pretty excited about it. She's a tea expert and I'm learning everything there is to know. She was hosting all of my buddies from the eclipse party last week, and as luck would have it she lives like two blocks away from me! That just doesn't happen in this city. Here's a picture of the lot of us:

It's kind of an emotional rollercoaster making friends with so many backpackers. Two of my friends just left to hitchhike through Japan, and another two are doing the same to Tibet tomorrow. I thought I was kind of done with the travel bug, but I was definitely wrong.

Work's good, the kids are cute.

Today I spent all day in my apartment finally getting my stuff all sorted. I also was absolutely ecstatic to find that directly behind my apartment complex is a fruit/veggie/meat market. I'll probably steer clear of the meat, but I bought like a billion vegitables to make dinner and it cost me like 9 kuai! (about $1.30) Maybe I should explain the money system here because you're bound to get confused. The official currency is the RMB (RenMinBi, "the people's currency" or something like that) but it's also referred to as the Yuan (much more common) but then it's ALSO called "Kuai" (rhymes with 'why') which is more like saying "bucks" or "quid" if you're British (which none of you are.)

I haven't really said anything about the city yet. I love it so far, which is weird because I hated it when I studied here three years ago. But I'm looking for different things at this point, and I guess I'm finding them.

I live in a district called Jing'An, which is named after a temple right by our metro stop. Lots of foreigners live in this neighborhood, but regardless of that reputation I never seem to run into any. And I get about as many stares here as I do anywhere else in the city. I'm kind of north-west of the city center, but only two metro stops from People's Square, which is the big hub of things (kind of.) I work in a district called XuJiaHui, which is almost directly south of me. The metro lines are all jumbled up and I have to go out of the way to get there by subway, so hopefully this week I'll puzzle out the bus system or just buy a bike (while it's still bearably cool out at least.)

There are around 19 million people living in this city, and they all seem to crowd into the People's Square metro stop right around 6:30 during my commute home:

It's an exercise in patience, to say the least. Waiting in line to walk down a staircase is pretty high up there on my 'worst things to have to do' list.

I'm on the prowl for clothing written in Chinglish. I desperately want to start a website selling mistranslated t-shirts.

Yesterday there was an 'f' missing on a box in the subway and I spent about 20 minutes thinking about what an "ire extinguisher" would be used for.

I'm listening to my roommates right now having a heated argument in the kitchen over whether it's any different to kill a spider than it is to kill a cockroach. Richard is on the side of spiders but against roaches. Jackie hates both, and now Richard is trying to save the spider. This is all happening while they clean the filter for our two turtles, which they let run free around the apartment every few days. I like it here.

Long story short, everything in my life here fell into place on Thursday. I got my job, signed a contract, got an apartment, and started working yesterday. I went in on Thursday, and they're like yea let's get your contract written up maybe tomorrow, oh wait we need substitutes this weekend DO IT NOW. And they totally let me sign for 11 months, so I'm officially finished with this job June 15th next year. W00t.

The apartment I found is rediculous (in the good way.) Basically, I managed to find the nicest apartment possible in the lowest possible rent range. I'm pay like... $220 or something a month, and this place is in a sick (in the good way) neighborhood and the aparment is beautiful and we have a balcony with a view and everything. The catch is I'll be living in a room the size of a large walk-in closet. But it's cool, there's loads of closet space and my bed slides in and out from under my benchslashdeskchair. I don't even care anymore I just want my own fucking room. Oh and my roommates seem nice, two british guys and a girl from Mexico. I think they're all in their thirties? I move in on Tuesday.

Anyway, just trying to keep you all up to speed. It looks like my schedule is going to be pretty great if I can get over the loss of my weekends. I'll be working four 9-hour days a week. So I get three weekdays off.

I've met a lot of new people. Some are cool. The teachers at my school seem nice enough. They're mostly all older than me I think. The school itself is a private English teaching school, so it's separate from the kids' normal education. So all our classes take place on nights and weekends.

China is blocking Facebook AND YouTube. Bastards.

I'm watching the longest solar eclipse (5-6 minutes) of our lifetime on Wednesday morning, if the weather holds.

All in all, this has been the easiest transition I've made in like the last three years. Let's hope it all holds together.