Leaving the Shire

Starting an adventure is often the hardest part of the entire thing. That first step out the door, the glance back towards a home, are often the most painful parts. Accompanying this, the first few words of an adventure blog are often the most difficult ones to write. So, a reason to explain why this has taken three weeks to write, as opposed to explaining what was happening the second I got off the plane.

Nevertheless, I’m here writing. Where’s “here,” you might ask? Jiu-bai-ba-shi-jiu BAI SE LU! You see, people are very good at pretending they don’t understand you when you stutter their language. So we’ve made the joke that if you’re trying to ask something in Mandarin, just say it incredibly fast and angry-sounding. It typically works. And I try not to think that I live on “Baise” road… My French brain still giggles at that.

Yet I digress. Shanghai, China has become for my home for at least the next year. Two years? Three years? Who knows. The topic of “how long will you stay?” is definitely a popular one, but I keep reminding myself that I haven’t even been here a month. It’s a huge decision and I still haven’t properly settled into this culture.

Again, I digress. China. It’s a fascinating culture, and while I haven’t fallen madly in love like I did with France, it’s definitely caught something of me. The downtown area at night is as if Las Vegas and New York had a baby, and then that baby decided to be rebellious and move to an eastern culture. It’s bright, it’s neon, yet it’s still quite distinctly Chinese. There are parts around the city that are filled with foreigners, but there’s nothing that brings the familiarity of home. I had that thought the other day… that while in Europe I had England to make me feel more at home, there’s nothing within fifteen thousand kilometres that feels anything like familiarity.

Since I have three weeks to smush into one blog post, I’ll paraphrase. My fourteen-hour plane ride was lots of fun: I watched Toy Story 3, I played the Sims. Very productive. But I had no one next to me! Yay. My flight was a bit early, so I ended up waiting at the airport for a while before my pickup, but once they got there it was quite easy. We picked up three other teachers, two girls from North Carolina, and a guy from Detroit. I got my first taste of Chinese traffic (makes Italy look tame!) and then we arrived at our hotel in downtown. I appreciated the plushness and a lack of roommate before collapsing. The next day, we voyaged out and got phones, metro cards, went to Pudong, saw the Anal Bead/Pearl Tower, and I made friends with my new coworkers. The first thing I noticed was the staring – especially in groups, us “whiteys” gain lots and lots of attention. We had people taking pictures with us, for god’s sake. The native Shanghainese don’t really mind us, but if you go to the tourist-y places you get all the Chinese who are visiting the big city from all over China… And those are the ones who are amazed by you. We walked all around, then shared a big hot pot after.

The day after, orientation started. The five days of orientation just kind of blur together… There was so much information that I barely got anything into my brain. More importantly, though, I was getting settled into my Chinese life. Two days after I arrived, we moved into our apartments at Shanghai Zhong Xue, AKA Shanghai high school. My apartment is quite lovely, it’s roomy enough for me… Of course, there’s the whole bit of being on the fifth floor. Moving my two heavy-ass suitcases up was really exciting. And of course, because I’m all the way up here, I have absolutely NO water pressure. So showering is super fun. But I can be nice and loud, since I’m all the way up here, and I don’t really hear anyone else either. So it’s nice. The most awkward part is that some of the high schoolers are housed in the building next to ours. They’re gone during the weekends, but in the week I have to be aware that they’re there… Though mind you, they’re quite loud enough that you know.

So the area I’m in is called Xu’hui, a few miles out of downtown and quite suburban. There’s a definite change of upkeep as you step off campus, and things get more crowded and livelier. The street we live on, Baise (heehee), is filled to the brim with shops, restaurants, “salons,” and everything else you could imagine. And things are ridiculously cheap here. As long as you don’t go for western food (where you’ll pay western prices), you can easily go out and eat for an American dollar. The language is also super fun. I know how to say a few food words and how to count, and how to ask a few questions, but that’s it for now. I’ll get there, but most people take it in good humour. The ones who grumble or yell at you in Chinese, well, it’s an experience. There’s also the French Concession nearby, which is filled with all sorts of lovely western things and foreigners, so it’s good if you want to grab a burger or anything that you don’t eat with chopsticks.

Let’s see… I still haven’t worked out my stove, but once I do I’m definitely busting out the cooking. That’ll be exciting. For now, it’s been cereal and PBJ. Sounds like my French diet… Though I get noodles or dumplings a lot out on Baise. Ooh, and there’s an amazing smoothie place which makes me super happy. I keep getting eaten alive by bugs. And the cicadas are suuuuper loud here, it’s very strange for me. The water is completely undrinkable, so we have to buy clean water to drink and cook with. Though back on the subject of food, the food is… interesting. Lots of seafood, which I keep trying and I continue to not like. Occasionally I’ll find strange body parts, like chicken heads, in my food. I ate duck brains and jelly fish and octopus. And I’m working really hard on liking beer, since the wine here is terrible.

The traffic here is insane. People drive in the opposite lanes, in two lanes at once, they run reds, they cut people off, they come inches within each other, the scooters and bikes all run lights and get all over the place… I am terrified of getting a bike. I would die. The weather has been really toasty, in the eighties and humid and rainy, but it seems to be cooling down. I think it’s supposed to give us one final heat wave before cooling off at the end of the week.

Teaching! Teaching is… interesting. It’s a lot of work. All of my teachers ever, I’m so sorry I never appreciated you as much as you deserve it. Really. It’s hard. It’s a lot of work outside of the classroom. I’m slowly getting the hang of it, though… It’s weird to always be dressing professionally, but I don’t think I’d want to dress smart casual or anything. I’d be mistaken for a student a lot. My tenth graders are amazing, they’re very fun. My ninth graders are exciting. They’re a challenge. I’m teaching them twice, once for history and once for English. I got to drop a book on two sleepers in the front row on the first day. And then I finally started getting respect when I failed a few tests for talking. (Okay, I exaggerate, but I did take away points!)

Let’s see… Shanghai in general is really great, I’m loving it. I’ve spent this weekend just wandering around. During orientation we took a river cruise, and I must say I loooooove the Bund. It’s like being back in France, so I pretend to be a French tourist. And Pudong is absolutely gorgeous. The night scene is really nice… It’s mostly foreigners, so it’s a little expensive, but it’s still really fun. This weekend we went to a brewery after a banquet (big fancy dinner with weird food to show off how rich the school is) and we met lots of cool people. And then today I hung out at Chairman Mao’s old house. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to work for the government because of that. We also went to a temple, stood in the wrong line for ten minutes, and got sufficiently lost two days in a row. My friends don’t believe in my sense of direction, but it’s rather difficult when everything’s in Chinese.

Okay. Coming up on two pages, so I’ll wrap up. I’m having a really good time, miss everyone back home. We’ve got a trip to Beijing planned for our week-long National Holiday. (Flying, not taking the deadly bullet train.) Going to Japan for Christmas to visit my wonderful brother. Then we have three weeks of lovely, lovely vacation, in which some of us are planning to do southeast Asia. We’ll figure out details later. Oh, and Hong Kong during the western New Year’s sounds really fun as well. We’ll make it happen.

Peace out, friends/family/etc. Holding up the Californian awesomeness in China. Miss you all.

PS – go Angels!