So it begins...

So, here we go. This blog is going to be essentially a record of my various exploits during my gap year in China.

I left California August 27th at 10 in the morning and after two flight and a ridiculous time change reached Shanghai at 6 in the evening August 28th. I had planned to spend my layover in San Francisco hanging out and drinking coffee thus using up the remainder of my star bucks card before I left... But I managed to end up in the only two airport terminals in the contiguous United States without a single star bucks... So it goes... I have to say that the flight I took may have been the single coolest flight ever. Why? Because for the meal they served ramen. They gave us each a bowl and then came around with boiling water to fill them.

When we reached Shanghai we were picked up by some of the CIEE staff. There were three of us on the flight from San Francisco. Me, Megan, who is from Boise, and Jonas, who is from San Francisco.

Driving in to the city was surreal. We were all giggling and jet lagged and none of us could believe we were really here. Shanghai is an amazing city, especially lit up at night.

At the end of the bus ride we were met by our Host Families. I love my host family. They are wonderful. My new little sister Angel is incredibly nice and very accommodating about translating for me, though it is yet another motivation for me to learn Chinese fast, so that I do not need to depend on a 14 year old to communicate. My host family also has a talking pet bird which currently speaks more Chinese than I do. We have to set language goals, and one of mine currently is to learn more Chinese than Fifi (the bird).

There are five kids total in the program. Besides Megan, Jonas, and I there is Kate who is from Wisconsin, and Nate, from Kentucky. We all get along well and they are a really cool group. It is a relief sometimes to be able to just talk in English.

So far we have been getting a lot of the administrative work done such as registration at the school and residency permits from the police. The rest of the time we have been touring the city.

I went with my host family to visit the Yu Gardens or Chén huáng miào. It is old town shanghai, which has been recreated into a tourist destination. I am usually not a big fan of touristy stuff, but this was really cool with a bunch of different shops and traditional Chinese goodies. We went out to a traditional Chinese breakfast and had shen long which are amazing pork and crab dumplings.

The next day the five of us took the metro down to the huge "fake market" which is where they sell all the knock off products. It was a blast wandering around and we made a couple of new best friends who really wanted to sell us stuff. We finally escaped our most persistent friend by ducking into what turned out to be a massive underground mall that probably ran for miles, I don't know, we turned back after a while.

For all you shoppers I think I found the Mall To End All Malls. My host family took me there to look around and have dinner. It is called Cloud Nine Mall in Zhongshan Park also known as the Shanghai Summit Shopping City. Shopping city is about accurate. It has eight stories not counting the Giant Carrefour (French grocery store) downstairs. You could get lost in there for days easily I am sure.

On the end of my tourist destination litany, today we went to the Oriental Pearl Tower which was INSANE. The architecture was amazing and the weather cooperated so we could see for miles from the top. You could really believe that this city has 20 million people in this city looking out at that view. For as far as they eye could see there were sky scrappers, it was mind boggling the number of people that they could encompass. We had more tourist fun while we were there. The five of us lined up to take a group picture, and the Chinese decided to take advantage of the addition to the usual tourist attractions and lined up so that they could get their picture of the blondness too.

Since it is me we are talking about I have been learning about Chinese food and culture from my host family. Yesterday my host father taught me how to do a traditional Chinese tea ceremony which was pretty awesome. We also made dumplings and I now have some masterful dumpling folding skills.

I have been going to orientation events at my school (East China Normal University) and the campus is amazingly beautiful. There is a river running through the middle and all of these trees. There are also some really fun caves that you can walk through to get to this little pond/grotto thing. It is awesome.

I finished registration this morning, and I will be starting my class: Chinese 1-2, on Friday morning at 8:30. I am really looking forward to knowing enough to at least understand the bird when it speaks Chinese.

I will be putting up some pictures over the next few days, either on this blog or maybe on facebook, it depends on how the uploading works for this blog and such.

So that is pretty much how my first 5 days have gone feel free to email me or skype me or yahoo messenger me or whatever.

On a final entertaining note:

you know you are in China when the shampoo bottle in the bathroom has Chairman Mao on it.

See you all later.