Shanghai Update

Shanghai has really surprised me. It's only been 4 days, but my impression so far is that it's much cleaner and the people are nicer than I'd expected.
Here's a rundown of what I've been up to:

Thursday was spent registering at the police station and then registering for class and checking out the campus. We met the instructor (who is avisiting professor from the US), the admin department and the director, Rick.
Rick took us out to lunch and was in charge of ordering for everyone. It's typical here to just order a variety of dishes and then share them with the table.

On Friday the other guy from Vienna (Christian) arrived and we showed him around our neighborhood. We went to dinner with the two visiting professors that were about to return to the US. Once again, we ordered a bunch of different dishes and tried them all.

Saturday morning was my first class from 8:30am to noon. So early! Besides Georg (from Vienna) there is another "Westerner" from Texas. The rest of the class is made up of Chinese, Thais and Koreans. There are about 30 of us in the class, which is quite a bit more than Vienna (where classes are capped at 20). It is definitely going to take some getting used to in terms of working together with the students, but everyone was really friendly and seemed happy to get to know us.

After class we met up with Christian and we started to explore the city a little bit. We have a card with the names of several points of interest in the city with their names also written in Chinese characters for the taxi drivers. We showed the driver where we wanted to go (a famous park) and he dropped us off...well, we quickly realized that he took us to some random park and not the one we wanted. Nevertheless, it was really enjoyable. I'd read about how the Chinese really make use of parks and play games like chess or checkers, practice dancing, exercise etc in them and it's so true! It's really fun to watch.

Saturday night was Halloween night, but I wasnt sure if I should dress up or not. I decided to play it safe and not dress up, but now I wish I had! We went to a really nice place called Bar Rouge that has a spectacular view of the Shanghai skyline. It's basically targeted towards tourists, so there were a ton of people dressed up. Even the locals that were there were also dressed up in some really fabulous costumes. It was such a fun night!

In case you're wondering about my living situation, here are the details:
I have my own apartment in a really nice building. It has a little kitchen, a living room and dining area, an office, a bedroom and a full bath. It's on the 16th floor and I have great views from every room. The apartment building itself is part of a complex called "Rainbow City" and it's attached to the "Lifestyle Mall" which has literally EVERYTHING a person could need. There is an E-Mart on the bottom floor which is a "hyper market" with everything from groceries to electronics to clothes. There are 3 floors of boutiques/shops, hair and nail salons, etc. We also have a Starbucks, Dairy Queen, KFC and Pizza Hut in the complex, as well as other local restaurants. This is all literally right outside of my building. I've been good though, and only eaten at local places :)

Some random summaries of what I've experienced so far: English is even harder to come by than it was in Thailand! It has made things very interesting so far...my "miming" techniques will be great by the time I leave here. I get stared at quite a bit in the area where I live because it's not very touristy, but in the busier areas I'm not such a novelty. From what I've seen, Shanghai is much cleaner than Bangkok and is less chaotic, which surprised me because Shanghai has twice as many people. It's super loud here...I can hear honking horns and other random noises 24/7. The water is disgusting- it's supposedly safe to drink, but even using the tap just for brushing my teeth is pretty gross. The weather has been great- it was very warm the first few days but cooled off today after a huge downpour last night. It's very smoggy but the sun has managed to break through a few times and that makes me happy :)

Well, that about sums it up for now. I'm off to get some dinner with my neighbors!