Happy One Month in China!

Caption: Don't be fooled by the campus' beauty. Aliens land here at night.

Caption: My new buddies

Caption: Hongkou Stadium, one of the many stadiums where the 2008 FIFA Women's World Cup was held. We went there to support the US team when it played against Nigeria.

Caption: I guess I missed the memo for laundry day.

Caption: Little Chinese girl outside the school gate. Isn't she adorable?

Caption: When the clock strikes 6:30 am, the students line up for their morning exercises.

Happy One Month in China! Time has flown by, and I have officially been living (and surviving) in Shanghai for a month. So much has changed already. In one month, I transformed from a nervous person living in a foreign city to one who is quite comfortable with her surroundings. Shanghai is a big city, but it’s very similar to New York. In some ways, the “Paris of the East” is better than, if not on par with New York – the subways are much cleaner, the Chinese food is tastier (as one would expect), and I have ample opportunity to practice my Chinese.

Obviously, I'm still adjusting to the new environment. I find certain things to be a bit strange in China – for one, many Chinese people do not believe in the concept of a line or queue. In the US, you wait in line for your turn. In China, it’s a free for all society where the battles of the strongest elbows conquer. If you want to buy a ticket for the metro, you stick your elbows out and shove your way to the teller. To get onto the metro, you stick your elbows out and force your way onto the train. Taxis, restaurants, the copy machine room – elbows out and shove, shove, shove. It’s not that the country does not have any manners. It’s just that the American concept of manners differs from the Chinese. Queues do not exist nor should they have any reason to. Word on the street is that we will have “Queuing Day” to help prepare the local Beijing people for the 2008 Summer Olympics (have fun implementing that).

Other interesting things – the campus, as I mentioned before, is very serene and beautiful during the day. However, when darkness falls, the campus morphs into a zoo/X-files scene. I’m not sure why, but the school installed these bright and eerie green lights that make the campus look like the perfect home for aliens. Ferrets hide in the bushes and startle us at night. Bats fly in and circle around while we’re doing an evening run on the track. There are 4 or 5 cats that hide in the bushes and hiss at us as we walk by. There’s also a stray dog named “Trotsky” that darts out of nowhere and chases the pedestrians around campus. Oh, and the cats chase Trotsky. It's quite comical.

Classes started in early September and have been going relatively well. I’m teaching every possible subject and grade there is – International Baccalaureate Economics (12th grade), 10th grade Economics, 6th grade ESL, 5th Grade Geography, and 4th Grade Science – you name it, I teach it. I have to refresh my memory with parts of the animal/plant cells and learn about David Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage (for those of you who don’t know, it’s one of the fundamental international trade theories). I love teaching the primary school children, I am challenged by the 12th graders, and I get headaches from the 10th graders.

So far so good. The school is keeping me busy, but I'm having a great time here. Next week will be a national holiday for China, and I will be traveling down south to Yangshuo. I can't wait to sit in the rice paddy fields and vegetate. No reading for 1 week!