Sunday, August 5, 2007 -
Settling into Shanghai
Well thank you facebook for not importing new notes... :[
With the weekend ending, I've gotta say, Shanghai is pretty nifty, except for the construction/running around with hammers being loud at 6am on the weekend! This is the scaffolding that they're putting up. Imagine looking out your window and seeing someone cling to the building next to you because they're standing on old rusty pipes... That's my view!
On Wednesday I took a taxi to Nanjing Lu and walked around for about 3 hours. It was hot, and that wasn't too good of an idea! Friday was probably the best day I've had since I got here! 10 or so of us went to lunch in a couple groups Thursday and when we came back to the dorms, Jon and I found out that for the past week we were supposed to go to lectures every afternoon! It would have been nice if someone told us...! Well, Raoul was coming down the stairs and said that we were supposed to go to Tai Chi class, which was where he was headed (NORMA!!!). I was really excited, and we head over to the next building, not knowing what to expect. We started off with some Gongfu, and did a punch-kick-whirl around-slide along the floor thing. After this, we took a break and Raoul was practicing the gongfu and was making these short "whoo..!" exhale noises and pulling his fists to his sided quickly. In a Spanish-Chinese mixture, I told him it looked like he was starting a tango and we went shoulder to shoulder and stomp-danced in a circle doing the characteristic lust-death stare then whirled around and did it again in the opposite direction. Everyone started clapping and going "OOOOOH!!!" as if it was some fancy-shmancy dance move when it was really just... stomping in a circle while glaring at each other!
We initially learned 4 basic motions of tàijíquán and then our teacher added the footwork. Everything was so slight and all the directions were in Chinese, you really had to concentrate on him. It was nice though because one in a while he would walk through our lines and correct our positions, so it's not like he was just rambling on and not caring whether or not we were doing it correctly! About halfway through the session, it started raining (like it is right now... hard!) and thunder grumbled outside. By then we had developed a pretty connected routine and it was just so neat to have these lines of people silently, slowly, and carefully move through the poses, with only a "yi.. er.. san.. si..." to be heard by the teacher calling out the moves over the rain and thunder. After that, I went back to my room and got changed for the night, because a big group of us was going to go to dinner and then a disco.
Lucas, Luis and I got pizza at Daning Shopping Center while everyone else went for Chinese and we saw there were like 7 policemen and a bunch of people gathered around these two guys who had gotten into a fight and one of them knocked the other right in the eye (with an umbrella??) and he was all icky looking but seemed okay with it haha. Don't anyone worry though! There are policemen every like 50 feet and it's actually a really safe place, these guys just had beef with each other! Then after skipping and sliding around in the drizzle...
We went back and met up with everyone and then ran around the subway to catch the last train to the Bund. We then walked for forever and I gave directions to some lost Americans (yay!) before getting to the club we decided not to go in to because they had a cover of 100 kuai and a dress code so it seemed lame and hoity-toity.
Jonas, who's from France, suggested a disco that he went to last weekend and we had to take 4 cabs in order to get the whole group over there! It was great though, we got a section to ourselves so we could all dance together and hang out, so it was nifty... and all the songs were in English so everyone looked on jealously as we yelled out the lyrics to all the songs!
On Saturday, Luis and I got some coffee then went to the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Jin Mao Tower, the latter of which (right now) is the 5th tallest building in the world, and the tallest in China... for now anyway. Well, it was an amazing view and I'll try and put together a video of it so you can see what Shanghai looks like from it's tallest point! After that we went to the Shanghai Technology Museum metro stop... which is the new Xiangyang (fake brands) Market. We went to a stall and I haggled in Chinese for a "Chanel" purse and wallet that - after some persistence, intense haggling and threatening to walk away - I got for half the price of a purse that a girl haggling in English got... and I even got them to upgrade the wallet to a bigger one! It was actually really fun, and I might go back and buy some more stuff! They have a bunch of places selling jerseys, maybe I'll get a Messi one..!!!
Sunday, we were going to go to Hangzhou, but there weren't any trains running there. SO! We decided to see some more touristy things and go to Yu Garden and Jade Buddha Temple. It was really pretty and it was funny to see Chinese tourist guides speaking in Spanish and French. We tagged along a Spanish one for a little bit and Luis interpreted some of the things the woman was saying about the gardens. All in all it was a great place to visit, though full of tourists and with plenty of hawkers outside going "hello lady! bag? watch? dvd?" they yell random name brands at you so my new name is Chanel and Luis is now Louis Vitton! We'll just say ni hao next time they yell that at us...
I had 5 blisters on my feet by the time we were done so we stopped into a pharmacy to pick up some bandaids. We were getting them and it turned out to be a traditional medicine shoppe too and the woman at the opposite counter ran over and started pointing at my leg (which has some hives on it) and said something, so I showed her the ones on my stomach and said "hen duo!" (which is "a lot!") and she ran to her counter and started excitedly pointing at a creme and talking really fast in Chinese. It was less that $2 so I thought why not, and picked it up... we'll see if it helps any :] She had a good eye though, to notice them from across the way!
The Jade Buddha Temple was also really neat, but I liked the Yu Garden better. The temple was filled with Spaniards toting around Chinese babies that they were in the process of adopting, a very common process, Luis says. He recognized the people in front of us as Valencians, who have a similar accent to his, which is Catalan. Now we're watching FC Barcelona play in Beijing and the Chinese commentators are EXTREMELY biased!!! FC Barca scored and they didn't say a word. I miss hearing "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!! GOLASO!!!! GOL GOL GOL GOL GOL!!!" ^_^
there's a bunch of my touristy pictures at: Shanghai Sights
So this was ridiculously long, but hey! I did a lot this weekend!
Misslove you all!!!
Elisa
We went back and met up with everyone and then ran around the subway to catch the last train to the Bund. We then walked for forever and I gave directions to some lost Americans (yay!) before getting to the club we decided not to go in to because they had a cover of 100 kuai and a dress code so it seemed lame and hoity-toity.
