Visiting the Pearl Tower

During my last video call with my parents, they pointed out that for all they know I'm not even in China. I hadn't taken pictures of any landmarks or had visited any important places.

Well not anymore! Today I went with Charlotte and her boyfriend Andrew to the Pearl Tower. Although it was not an enjoyable experience, I'm still glad I went...which are conflicting viewpoints, I know.

Anyway, I'm going to back up. I met Charlotte and Andrew outside the subway and we went to lunch first. We found an Element Fresh in this HUGE mall right in the shadow of the Tower. I had a tandori chicken wrap that was amazing. Then we headed over to the tower.
The tower is gigantic. It seems like it's larger than it should be, for some reason. At least to me. When I look at it, I imagine it's sort of like a diagram of a molecule that for some reason muted into a skyscraper. The closer you get to it, the more wrong it seems to me.

I don't have a picture of ME in front of the building to prove I was actually there, but here is a picture of Charlotte and Andrew.
So there are different prices depending on where you want to go in the tower. Charlotte sort of made the decision for all of us, since I couldn't make up my mind either way. We were going to spend the 150RMB (about $21) to get package A. That involves visiting the main view deck (the middle bubble) as well as the highest you can go (the tiny bubble at the very top of the picture above) and a ticket to the museum at the bottom of the tower.

They got in line in front of me and got their tickets. I was immediately behind them in line and when I asked for the same thing the woman behind the counter said "No! Too many people!" and refused to sell me the same ticket. She instead sold me a 100RMB ticket, which gets you to the main viewdeck and the museum. Needless to say, I was a little miffed.

As soon as we went into the building, we were split up and I didn't end up seeing them again. That really frustrated me. The main reason I haven't been doing a lot of touristy things is that I wanted to do them WITH someone. I personally believe it's not as much fun by yourself. Here I was out with new friends trying to have some fun and I ended up spending the rest of the day alone. It was no ones fault, but it still makes me angry.

The entire day seemed to involve waiting in lines. I hate lines. And I hate crowds. Chinese people have a different idea of proper line manners and personal space too. Which is fine if you are used to it, but after a month I'm still not. Having at least three complete strangers touching me and pushing me for the better part of two hours while entire families cut in front of me in line is NOT my idea of fun. There was also a small kid in FRONT of me who gaped at me with her wide open mouth and eyes making me feel like a freak and a small kid in BACK of me who delighted in bouncing his head off of my butt (no, I am not joking).

FINALLY I made it to the main observation deck, which did have a pretty cool 360 degree view. It's 263 meters up and the day was pretty clear, so I got some neat pictures. Although most of my pictures were taken pointed downwards, this rather awesome shot of two of the tallest buildings in Shanghai was taken looking straight out of the window.

After walking completely around the inside observation deck twice and once around the half way outside view deck (which was very windy), I decided to head back down. Which meant waiting in a line AGAIN.

Once I got back downstairs I was tempted to just walk out and go home. I'm glad I didn't. The museum ended up being my favorite part. At first is was a lot of exhibits with mannequins showing life in "old shanghai". There were some very cool displays. I'm going to put them up in a facebook album and connect the link later. One of my favorite things was a replica of an old shanghai alley that you could walk through.
The museum showed how much Shanghai has changed over the years, especially in monumental locations like Nanjing Road and the Bund. They also spent time explaining the opium wars and how that changed Shanghai too.

After I got out of the museum my feet and ankles were hurting really badly. It was about 4pm and I had been out of the apartment since 8am. I texted Charlotte to say I was sorry I was leaving, then headed back home. Quick stop at Carrefour then back to my apartment.

Now I said it wasn't enjoyable, which isn't altogether true. I liked the museum and the view. But the waiting in line, the being shoved around and the being separated from my friends severely marred the day. I'm still glad I went because now at least I can cross something off my list. Go to the Pearl Tower? Check!

Next....I dunno...maybe the Bund at night?

This is a picture I snapped on my way out of the Pearl tower. Just thought it looked cool...

Anyway, much love!
-Stephanie

EDIT: The album is up on facebook. More pictures from today can be found HERE.

PingHe Party

So on Saturday I had work in the morning, then ran quickly out to Puxi to meet up with that woman from City Weekend. Getting out of the subway I was rather lost and didn't want to be too late, so I just grabbed a cab. Once I arrived (after some trouble with elevators that only went to certain floors) I got immediately down to proof-reading. It took me about two hours to do what she said normally takes three and they pay by session and not by hour...whoo! She said she'd let me know the next time they needed me. On the way out, I paid attention to my surroundings and found a super easy way to get back to the subway. I just need to get out of the right exit from the station!

I took the subway and bus back, though thinking about it now I should have taken a cab instead. Although I made it back only 5 minutes later than I thought the party was going to start, there was apparently a warm up band. That band was led by one of my favorite students; a boy named Jackey. I was really upset to have missed it, and asked him to tell me the next time he performs.

The "party" ended up being a show. There were some absolutely adorable kids doing dances, singing songs, putting on skits. (One thing that seriously amused me was some kids singing "It's a Hard Knock Life" when these students are almost all from very well to do families.) Some high schoolers did some hip hop dancing. Some teachers sang the famous "Beijing Welcomes You" song.

The stage was huge and was setup almost overnight. One of the first performances I saw was 25 people playing piano. Twenty-five pianos! Five grands and twenty uprights. Dang.

There was a rather huge audience. I am guessing it was most of the students and teachers and probably a lot of families as well.

One rather strange performance (in my opinion) involved soldiers in uniform doing a song in a kind of sign language. It was just odd to see these men in uniform with stoic faces using sign language to a very floaty sounding song. After they were done they marched off stage, got into formation and marched away. There was even some pyrotechnics! Two fireworks were set off from the back of the audience and a shower of sparks came down from the stage and the side of the school for the final number. As promised, June was able to get me some crabs from the school. Four of them! Yum. I reheated two of them in my steamer on Saturday for dinner and will probably have the other two for lunch today. I took some video of the performances, but my last video didn't work so well on blogger. I might later upload them to youtube instead.

Tomorrow afternoon I have plans to hang out with Charlotte. Paul and Kyle, Drew people who are studying in Nanjing, should be in Shanghai starting on Wednesday. I am really looking forward to seeing people from home.

That's all for now I suppose!

Much love!

Some Pretty Things

Yesterday I received this wonderful card from Bonnie. I laughed so hard when I got it. It's absolutely adorable. (And in case you can't tell, that is not a picture on front, but an actual piece of knitted-ness on some toothpick needles. SO CUTE.) This card is made even funnier if you know the story of the first pair of socks I ever knitted (excessive rum might have been involved). I feel so loved! A package on Thursday and a card on Friday!
And here is a picture of a bracelet I made last night for Zeno. I wanted to say "thank you" for letting me borrow her flyswatter and also "sorry" since one of my classes broke a huge chunk out of her flyswatter. Oops. She seems to like it a lot. I like it too! For you chainmaille people out there, it's a normal mobeius pattern, I just put beads on the closed rings.
Today I am running over to the City Weekend office to check out that proof-reading business, then I need to rush back in time for the PingHe 27th night party. I'm still a little unsure as to what the whole party is about, but I'm expected to be there and it will also give me chance to see my students NOT in class.

The Jabberwocky exercise seems to be going over ok, though I have had to explain things over and over sometimes. Some kids have really excelled at it, and not always the ones I expected, which makes me happy. When we did tongue twisters I found an easy way to get kids interested. I told them any student that read one aloud to the class got an extra point on their homework. Little grade-grubbers jumped at the chance. ;-) They also taught me a tongue twister in Chinese, but I don't know what it means. To the dictionary!!!

As a side note, I finally found a way to get the lady behind the counter in Family Mart to stop talking to me in English. I bought a Chinese magazine (I wanted to practice my reading and writing and thought it would be more interesting and up to date than a text book). Suddenly now she always speaks to me in Chinese. :-D

A PACKAGE!!!

So yesterday after work I went to a restaurant called "Element Fresh" (which was delicious, by the way) with Charlotte. We were planning to meet at the front gate. When I got there, there was a bit of a hub-bub and one of the guards pointed at me excitedly and then ducked into the guard hut. Charlotte looked at me and said "I think they have something for you."

Out he came with a box in his arms. It was indeed a package! From my fabulous friend Cori! Charlotte and I only had a limited time for dinner, so I left the package at the guard hut while we had dinner, but came back later to excitedly rip it open.
What a lovely package! I think I shall destroy it with love. As Cori said she had to do, there was a ton of paper work on it saying what was in the package and so on.
Here are the contents of my first package received in China. Two boxes of cheez-its, a ginormous bag of smartfood popcorn and a book called "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan". Cori is right, it is a good book. I am already on chapter four. I feel bad that Cori went through all the trouble to send me Cheez-its when I have now discovered that I can buy them here, but I am sure they will taste better because they are from a friend and they came in a package and they are from the good ole' USA. Obviously, I am quite happy to have so many Cheez-its.

I have already collected some items for Cori's return package. Now I just need to find a post office! Ned told me there is one near the Carrefour, so I should do some exploring since I have next week off.

Thank you so much for the package Cori! It means a lot to me and I will send you yours as soon as I have everything together! :-)

Another Food Post

Just a couple food related things that have been happening...

On Friday of last week they served crabs in the school cafeteria. Yum! I happened to be sitting with Jane at lunch and we were both sitting and talking and eating and I started eating my crab (which was DELICIOUS, by the way) and I noticed she kept looking at me rather strangely. I thought maybe I was making a mess of myself. Turns out she had never seen a foreigner eat crab before. Apparently she would very rarely even see a foreigner "brave enough" (as she put it) to put crab on their tray, but then they would chicken out and not eat it. I think it's just cuz foreigners aren't used to eating it Chinese style. You kind of have to munch and crunch and separate shell from meat with your tongue and teeth. And they eat the meat in the body, not just the legs. And that was what I was doing. I think doing so gained me some bonus points. She told a bunch of other Chinese teachers about it and I think I somehow became cooler because of it. And here I was thinking I was just eating lunch. There is some party for the school happening on Saturday and usually they give the Chinese teachers crabs as a gift and the foreign teachers fruit. June said she's going to ask if I can get crabs instead. :-)

You will never guess what I found in the imported section of Carrefour....CHEEZ-ITS! I swear they were not there before. I looked! Maybe it's something they only have once in a while or something. Anyway, I suppose I should take Cheez-its off my wish list. Even if Carrefour only has them once in a while. it will satisfy my cravings. Still can't find Smartfood anywhere, though I will keep my eyes open.

I just want to note that I know I've been talking about Western food like egg salad and cheez-its and the like. For those thinking I'm not getting enough Chinese food, keep in mind that lunch every week day is at the school cafeteria and more than half of the time if I make dinner I make Chinese food (usually dumplings).

The other day at the school cafe, the fruit for the day was a lime. Or at least I thought it was a lime. It looked like a lime. It was green like a lime. Then I noticed another teacher open their's up and inside was...an orange! I have never seen an orange with a solid green skin. It was rather yummy. I bought some the other night at the Carrefour and had one for breakfast yesterday. It tasted really sour though, when the one I had from the cafeteria was very sweet. Hopefully the rest I bought are ok.
What is that? A lime!?
Nope! A yummy orange. :-)

Big Small Nice Boring!

Today's class was based entirely out of a half of a page in one of the books we have. It says "Give big, small, nice and boring a break!", and then listed a bunch of synonyms that are far more interesting. I typed it all up and added even more words like happy, bad, sad, good-looking, and interesting. I wrote up flashcards with some of the words on the lists.

In class I split the students into three groups and gave them each a stack of the cards and told them to separate them by meaning just by guessing and no using dictionaries. Dear lord. When I said no dictionaries you would think I cut their arms off. One group had to be reminded three times that I wasn't blind. I mean come on, if both hands are under their desk and their eyes are glued to their laps I could pretty much guess that they aren't deep in thought. Another group got really into it and was doing things like finding familiar parts of the words, or seeing if it sounded like other words they knew.

Then I passed out a sheet with all the words on it and told them to hold on to it when writing and to try and use some of the new words.

Then we played a game! I wrote the basic words "big" "small" "nice", etc on the board and split the class into two groups lined up facing the blackboard. The person in front of each group got a flyswatter. I would call out one of the new words (ex: amiable instead of nice). The first person to slap the correct word on the board got a point for their team. They got REALLY into it. Especially when I made the last question worth 4 points so that either team could win. It also made me happy because the winning team didn't want one of students on their team and he ended up scoring the winning point. :-)

I've only taught this lesson to one class so far, but it was with my most uninvolved, least disciplined, and least respectful class. Since things went pretty well for that group, I'm excited to teach it to my more enjoyable classes.

The game went well. When I asked if they enjoyed it I got a loud chorus of "YES!" I told them if and when we did new words again, we could play again. It was nice to find that there is SOMETHING that can get my class of rocks to respond. It was also good because I practiced a little of getting respect from them. I waited until the whole class was quiet before I read the new word. After they noticed that, students were quieting down their classmates so that they could listen to me.

All Things Work Related

So yesterday I had a teacher sitting in on my full class. She left a little early but was there for the almost the whole period. I just got my feedback now. She said I seemed very natural in front of the students, smiling, and encouraging. She also thought it was good that I was explaining the different styles of music and talking about slang. Her advice was to have more student interaction and to tell more about the bands to get the students interested. When it comes to student-student interaction, I try to do it more in the half classes. It's nearly impossible in the full class in my opinion. I feel a little better and little less nervous about having multiple teachers sitting in on my afternoon class now.

Next week we get a full week off for the national holiday. I have no plans as of yet. I need to get out of the apartment and do SOMETHING or I might go stir crazy. When we come back, I agreed to cover some classes for another teacher on Monday and Tuesday. It works out that I would have each half of the 10th grade for two class periods, and then class B and D once each. I'll probably pick a 2 hour or so video and show half in each big class, but that still leaves me with something fun to do with class B and D. The reason I would be showing a video and doing something fun is A) I'm further ahead in the lesson plan than the other teachers and B) the students are going on a vacation (I think to Xi'an) for the rest of the week after Tuesday, so it makes no sense to start something new. Now I just need to pick a video. After Tuesday I have no class for the rest of that week, but I'm still required to come to work. Who knows what I'll do to fill my time.

I think I got a part time job as a proof-reader. Pete (my friend that lived here and left shortly after I arrived) alerted me of the position and I e-mailed the woman. I'll be going in this Saturday to check things out. It would be a three hour session every other week. It's not for the money so much as to have something to do and to meet some new people.

Yesterday at the end of work there was a spontaneous trip to a sushi restaurant with me, Zeno, June, Mrs. Luo (the head of IB), and a woman that people call Shopping (because her Chinese name sounds like shopping and she likes to shop!). It was fun to hang out with some work people outside of school. The sushi was delicious too. I had some trout that was especially yummy. The restaurant was one of those ones with the sushi train on a conveyor belt that twists and turns around the restaurant and you grab whatever you want and pay based on how many plates you have leftover. Someone treated us all to dinner, but I'm not sure if it was Mrs. Luo and Shopping...

I'm killing time now until my afternoon class. The music I am going to play in that class is taking forever to load.