I'm back!

Ok, so I skipped the whole month of November in terms of making blog posts. That's ok I think because November hasn't really been such a noteworthy month (December is going to be much better) with the except of a couple of important events. My high school friend Giulia came to visit me last week in the midst of her travels around China. It was lovely to see her...definitely helped perk my spirits up. Also, with her help I managed to buy my first ever pair of sized LARGE tracksuit pants. They are actually still a little bit too small for me too...Giulia was running to get things for me when I was in the change room and said she absolutely refused to get me an extra-large. In China, I am booty-licious.

                                                            with miss Giulia at the Bund

I also made a little trip the the wax museum with my friends Sandy and Sally where I was very happy to meet my future husband (nevermind the fact that he is now engaged to another woman). I'm still practicing my Chinese with Sandy but am feeling increasingly like an idiot. Its way harder than I originally let myself believe and I don't really feel like I'm progressing much. Which brings me to my next important update...

                                                  doing my best awkward youth group hug here

The school (Xiwai) has decided to hold a Christmas pageant-type thing for the kindergarten on the 23rd of December. They have chosen "Ode to Joy" (always, ALWAYS spelt "Odd to Joy" by my supervisor). Bit weird, not exactly a Christmas song but you know, whatever (a lot of Christmas songs are too religious, I guess everyone figured it would be better just to steer clear altogether). We are singing it in Chinese. Fine. Good. The only thing is that of course because we are singing it in Chinese it would be a really GREAT idea to have the only three people in the whoooooooole   kindergarten who are NOT native Chinese speakers sing a solo. Well yes, that would be a great idea. So there you have it. On the 23rd of December this year I will be in the auditorium at Xiwai most likely utterly humiliating myself by slaughtering a Chinese song (in more ways than one for those of you that know my singing) in front of a large group of native Chinese speakers. Personally I suspect that this is what they are somehow expecting and have organized things this way as a form of special amusement. Sigh. Well, so be it I guess. It probably won't be the first or last time I embarrass myself in front of a large group of strangers. 

                                                                 with the future hubby

Sigh...

Well its been a tricky couple of days. I'm really missing home. Or well, maybe not so much home itself as things like close friendships, family, Western food (also - having my mum cook for me), easy access to English books and being able to communicate and connect easily with the people around me.

I've realized that part of what has been making me feel depressed is just the amount of pressure that I'm putting on myself. I just keep thinking that I have to be the best ever kindergarten teacher, perfect the Chinese language and you know...save the world - all in the next year. I was thinking about it today and I realized...in the past two months I've moved to China, learned to read, write and speak a very basic amount of Chinese and started my first ever "big girl" job...which I'm am mostly teaching myself how to do on the fly. Its not so terrible I guess that I'm still a long way off from having all the friends/skills that I would like to have. I'm not sure why I feel like I have to be such a superhero!

But anyway, all of this to say- please call me/ write to me! I miss you all and I'd love to hear your voice/see your pretty faces on skype/ read email news.

EDIT: I also miss hot showers. And water pressure.

怎么样 - A little Chinese lesson...

I have a new favourite Chinese word! The word zěnmeyàng ( 怎么样) can be roughly translated as "how" in English according to my Chinese textbook. VERY roughly if you ask me. The way Chinese people use it can be quite different from the way we would use the word how. For instance "wǒ zhōumò qù zěnmeyàng?" (which is a sentence from my textbook) means "how about this weekend?". If you translated it word for word it would come out sounding something like...I weekend go how...yeah. So it tends to mean something a bit more than just "how". Chinese people like to use it as a greeting over nǐ hǎo...or so I'm told. Saying "nǐ zěnmeyàng?" is like saying "what's up?". Or you can just say "zěnmeyàng".

I love it. I love the way it sounds and I feel super Chinese when I say it. I can't wait to try it out on more people!

The other thing I really love about this language at the moment is the Chinese way of asking questions. Chinese is not a language that lends itself very well to straightforward yes or no questions from what I can tell. For instance, if you wanted to ask "is it ok?" you would have to say "hǎo bù hǎo?". This literally means "good not good," as if you were saying "circle one of the above"! I think its super cute. You don't need to say "yes" or "no" to this type of question. You just answer "good" (hǎo) or "not good" (bù hǎo). I'm sure I'll probably get over this since its actually a kind of longwinded way of asking something in a lot of other contexts and Sandy tells me that its a bit of a childish way of phrasing things. For now I'm happy to go around asking people if they are something bù something though.

Lately...

Well its been a weird couple of weeks for me...and it isn't quite over yet. Two important Chinese holidays have just passed (mid-Autumn festival and the Chinese national day) and they have thrown my whole schedule into a bit of a funk. I've had some time off work but the catch is that I have to make up quite a bit of it by working weekends. This isn't just for me or my school either...the whole country is going off to work on Saturday and Sunday. I've been trying to imagine what Canadians would say if the government decided one day to try to send everyone off to work on the weekend. I think "no WAY!" would be a resonable approximation of the response most people would give. Anyways, today was day one of my first seven day long work week. Sigh.

The week long holiday I've just had for the national day has given me the chance to do some more in depth exploration of Shanghai. Plus I finally made it to the Expo yesterday (pictures of this will have to wait unfortunately, until I can get them off my roommate). I had kind of hoped to do some travelling outside of Shanghai but unfortunately I was sans passport (need it for checking into hotels...is this true everywhere or just China??) and a little light on cash (surprise! I had to pay three months rent this month). As it was I contented myself with doing some touristy stuff; going to the aquarium and checking out the popular Yuyan Garden. I also had a lovely teppanyanki dinner with some of my fellow foreign teachers from Xiwai. I ate more meat there than I have in a while...I'm going a bit vego since I've been here.

The roomie and I at teppanyanki.                                     



                                                                                                            The lovely Yuyuan Garden.

Chinese Culture Shock

Its been a good week overall. I feel like I'm settling in more and more and my apartment is actually starting to feel like home. I'm definitely happy to be here. Yesterday however, was not a great day. Unfortunately, I had plans to do some exploring and walking around in downtown Shanghai (and to eventually end up at the Shanghai Museum) that resulted in a very very loooooong walk in the wrong direction.

So far my encounters with Chinese culture have been pretty positive. I knew (for the most part) what to expect before I got here and I braced myself for somethings that have actually turned out to not be as bad as I thought. Yesterday after my loooooong and hot walk in the wrong direction however, I was not a happy camper. Shanghai is SO busy. There is never really a moment when you aren't surrounded by tons of people andit can be exhausting. Also, there is something about getting cut off constantly by cars (who by the way, will honk angrily at you if you happen to get in their way while they are trying to make a turn on a red light) that sets me on edge. Its AMAZING that there aren't more incidents of road rage in this country. Quite honestly, I'm having a hard time keeping my pedestrian rage under control. But then someone did point out to me that the idea that pedestrians should have the right of way is not a Chinese one. Technically apparently, the rule goes that the bigger vehicle always has right of way with large trucks and buses at the top and bikes and pedestrians at the bottom. Pedestrians at the veeeeeeeeeeeeery bottom I would say. Add this to the fact that Chinese people on the whole are naturally pushy and competitive and you have Shanghai traffic.

On a different note, here are some new pictures of my Shanghai life. I have discovered that I LOVE mooncakes...I'm eating them all over the place. Also, the one good outcome of my unfortunate walk in the wrong direction down Nanjing Lu was that I made it a place called Jian'an Temple which is quite the ornate sight. The picture of the pond comes from a park that was near the temple. It was rather charming...lots of people hanging out, shady places to read a book and TONS of old people playing mahjong.



mmmmmm....this one was kind of crunchy. Its always a bit of a surprise to find out what is actually IN them since I can't read the Chinese. My guess on this one is walnuts and lotus seeds.





 

Bu Yao!

I had my first Chinese lesson with my new language exchange partner Sandy (yes, I know this is all very Eat, Pray, Love) yesterday. It was great! I'm so excited to be learning Chinese. So far my favorite thing to say is still zai jian! (goodbye) though. On the way home I came across the tuk-tuk style taxi drivers that always hang out at the metro station near my house. Up til now I've only been able to shake my head and wave my hand when they ask me if I want a ride (saying "no" in Chinese is more complicated than you might expect). After my Chinese lesson however I was ready to look him in the eye and say "bu yao!" (Don't need).

I also came EXTREMELY close to buying a baby bunny for 20 RMB off a guy on the street last night. He was keeping these tiny little bunnies in miniscule little cages on the sidewalk. One in particular looked so traumatized that he might have dropped dead of a heart attack at any moment.

As promised, here are some photos of my new life in Shanghai. As you can see, I live VERY close to the school where I teach; the top photo is the view from my bedroom window. The other photos are a street view of my neighbourhood bike/scooter/ motorcycle lane and the view from the kitchen window...which gives you a sense of the strange juxtaposition between rural and high-rise city life out here in Songjiang.

                                                                   

First days in China...

I'm alive! Sorry to everyone who may have started to worry that I might be dead or homeless. I can assure that that is not the case. I am finally able to make my first blog post today since I still have no internet at my house and I've been too busy at school during the day to spend much time writing.

So far my stay in China has been VERY busy. This past week has felt incredibly long but fortunately everything has gone pretty smoothly. I arrived on Saturday afternoon and was picked up from the airport and taken to a hotel by agency that recruited me. I haven't seen too much of Shanghai since then but from what I have seen I'd say that it's kind of sci-fi/ futuristic high-rise living/ polluted dystopia meets colourful, hectic and surprisingly leafy city. If that makes sense.

Songjiang, the suburb where I'm living now and where the school is located is a bit of a distance from Shanghai proper (about 45 mins on the metro). Its a bit quieter out here (though if this is the suburbs then downtown Ottawa must be the backwoods of nowhere) and less polluted (most days I can actually see the sky). Xiwai School is a fancy private Chinese international school where about half the student population (some kids as young as grade one) lives in boarding. I'm teaching Kinder 1 and 2 aaaaaaand...for the first time in my life...I have my own office!

Well, I have to get back to lesson planning and cleaning my apartment which is still a bit of a tip...although much less gross than when I moved in (I found some face cream in my bathroom just after I got there that had the word "placenta" on it). I have some photos of my new neighbourhood but unfortunately the internet is acting funny and not letting me upload anything so they will have to wait until next time.

Until then! Much love.

Ni hao!

I'm getting on the plane tomorrow! Facebook is blocked in China so I'll be posting photos and updates about my life here for anyone who's interested. Hopefully I'll have lots of nice things to show and tell. Until then...

zài jiàn! xox