My Intro to the REAL Shanghai

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So this is coming a couple of days after the fact. On the way home from our first day of the Scavenger Hunt all around Shanghai, I was riding back on the super-crowded Metro. When I turned around to look at my bag, I realized it was completely unzipped, which I thought was weird. I started looking through it and then basically started hyper-ventilating because my wallet wasn't there. After checking it again and again to make sure, it was pretty clear that I had been pickpocketed. So sucky because I lost all of my credit cards & my ATM card & drivers liscence & health insurance card, etc, all of the things you make sure you have before traveling in a foreign country. And it was also so sad because god knows what I keep in my wallet, but certainly lots of sentimental things, like all of my concert tickets since my first concert, which numbers over 50. I was really lucky though because I had my passport in my bag at the time, just in a different compartment, which I had used to just change some traveler's checks. So really bad timing on the traveler's checks, but losing my passport would have been a much bigger hassle. I guess it's just like my dad warned me about at the airport right before I got on the plane to London - the main thing I have to keep remembering is that this is an adventure, so I have to go with the flow............And with that in mind, there actually was a kind of upside to the situation, if you can call it that. One of the program directors went with me to the police station to report my lost wallet (theft is probably the biggest crime in China, but they'll only use the cash and will often discard the wallet & credit cards in a nearby garbage, so many people end up getting their stolen wallets back, fingers crossed bc of the concert tickets & such) and spending an hour with the Shanghai police definitely gave me some insight into the culture. It was actually kind of fun. At the end I had to write a written statement in Chinese characters, and "sign" my Chinese name, and lots of police men were crowded around because it's not every day they get to deal with a white foreigner. They were commenting on how I write my characters, and then they all started suggesting different places that I should go visit while I'm in China. I ended up writing some of them down, maybe I'll take their advice. It was definitely kinda cool to experience this side of the police, as a victim, because we all know how scary it would be to be on the other side of it.
Speaking of that, today we had a lecture from a police officer at our university about issues of safety, etc, and one really weird thing he said was that as of March 1st, the laws were changing to become stricter, and there was a list of over 250 things considered "crimes" that we could be prosecuted for. We were all a little nervous about what was on this list, but when we asked what we had to be careful not to do, he couldn't give us an answer, and there also wasn't a printed copy of the list that we could look at. So basically, we know we can get in big trouble for doing over 250 things here, but we don't have a clue what any of them are...
Classes started today, I am so eager to spend time in Chinese class to learn Chinese that I can immediately use. Although it wasn't originally my purpose in coming here, now that I'm here I want my speaking/understanding to get as good as possible, because I know this is my chance, and now I'm seriously thinking about figuring out a way to come back and make this city/this country a part of my life as a grown up. I am absolutely loving this city - it is completely on par with New York and my up-to-this-point favorite city in the world, London. I love how there are people and shops everywhere, food being sold on every street (my dad is freaking out that I'm eating food of the street, but we're all doing it, and we can see it being cooked, and I haven't been sick yet...), and a seemingly endless number of cool neighborhoods to explore. There's also such energy and such a vibe here. This weekend I finally went to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum and for the first time was able to put where I am in this city into context. I also had no idea how freaking gi-normous it is until I saw a huge 3-D model which contains every building in the city. It was cool locating our apartments on it.
What else of interest? Oh, I finally met up with my language tutor today, her English name is Jill, she's 22, and it was everything I'd hoped! Her English is pretty good, but she was trying to talk to me in Chinese for most of the time, and only if I didn't understand would she be able to translate what she was saying into English. It's great to try to carry on a conversation for an hour, wow.
Busy day tomorrow, I can't believe it's the last day in February. Looking forward to Friday's day trip, and to start planning our traveling over our breaks. We're trying to get a group together for a 10day trip to Tibet, and it looks like it may actually happen.

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