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Published: November 18th 2012
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It Never Gets Old
The cloudy, yet still awesome, view of the Shanghai skyline from our boat cruise Friday night This past Monday I went to the fabric market to get some tailor-made clothes. Although once very cheap, many foreigners these days are getting clothes tailor-made and I've found that a lot of times, it's either the same price or even a little more expensive than the same clothes in the states. So, I decided to not buy any of the clothes my parents and I had discussed about me buying in Shanghai, and instead opted to create my very own, Chelsea-designed, leather jacket.
For those of you that have accompanied me while shopping, you know I am most likely the worst shopping companion you will ever have. When it comes to clothing, I am very indecisive. I also have no idea if I like something, I just know if I really do not like something. I brought one of my guy friends along and made him stand there and help me pick out a jacket for four hours. I started by trying on some of the numerous samples that they had, as well as looking through a million different books for a jacket I might like. After a while, it became clear that it was going to have to
The Laoshi and I
My main Chinese teacher. She stands around 5 feet tall, and I'm deathly afraid of her, but she is awesome and a great teacher. be Chelsea-designed. I picked out everything from the collar to what kind of zippers to where I wanted the pockets to the angle of the pockets (that was confusing because they don't teach us how to say geometrical phrases in our regular Chinese class). Anyways, they say it will be ready in two weeks for me to come back for round two, and I can't wait I'm so excited!
In other news, I got an internship this week for my remaining time in Shanghai. I was feeling like I had some spare time during the week and wanted to experience more of the Chinese work culture, like I did in London. I'm working for this company that advises high school students through their college applications, for those that would like to go to college in the states. It sounds like a really cool company and I'm helping them fix their website, so I'm really excited. Plus, it gives me yet another opportunity to work on my Chinese skills.
The program that runs my study abroad had a huge conference on Friday, so instead of doing an after-the-semester boat cruise, my director pushed it up to this past Friday.
Animal Market
From birds to crickets, the market had a huge selection of animals. We went out to dinner with all of our teachers and afterwards went on a boat cruise to see the Shanghai skyline. There were two problems with this. Number one, it was pouring rain and freezing cold so we couldn't see any of the skyline nor did anyone want to be on the boat since it was so cold. Number two, now we won't be doing anything at the end of the semester with our teachers. Since they still have to teach us for another month, they were much more reserved than I hear they usually are with students at the end of the semester. My teacher was definitely still in teaching mode--everytime I talked she corrected my tones.
China is famous for the number of markets they have--they have a market for just about anything you could possibly want. I am shopped out, but there were a couple of markets that I still wanted to see just for fun. On Saturday, we went to the animal market, where you can literally buy anything from worms and lucky crickets to puppies and birds and turtles, and everything in between. It was nice to go to a market that was
Lucky Crickets Anyone?
Chinese shoppers pick out the luckiest of lucky crickets. designed for the locals as opposed to foreigners, because there was much less bargaining going on and it seemed more laid back. The only foreigners that were there were people like us who wanted to take pictures of everything.
Right across the street from the animal market was the antique market. You have to be kind of careful with the antique market as the Chinese use the word "antique" a little more loosely than Americans do. We walked passed a couple who were creating their antiques. Most of the stuff for sale was garbage, but we did find a couple of neat things to play around with. And, it was a great chance to practice my bargaining skills. I found that if you look at something that you are interested in, the store owner will come up to you and say "you like? how much? what's your price?" and then you say "oh no sorry I don't like it I'm just looking" and then they say "no, no, really. I give you the cheap price. Just 80 kuai" and then you say "no, no, I don't like it" and then you watch as they go from 80 kuai to
Tea Market
A woman serves us different types of tea at the market. 5 kuai in a matter of seconds. After exploring the two markets, we took a taxi over to the French Concession to grab some quality fish and chips British style.
Today we journeyed to the Tianshan tea market in Shanghai. With over 150 stalls selling just tea, there were millions of different types to try. We tried a couple of different teas before falling in love with a particular kind. They went through an entire ordeal to sell us the tea. We sat down and they talked with us about the different types of tea, from what was most popular with foreigners to what the locals love to drink. There were some communication gaps as they did not really speak English, but we eventually found a tea that we all loved. They boiled some water, and had this whole ritual of preparing the tea--it was really quite exciting to watch them prepare tea and learn about the culture. However, we soon found out that it was 200 kuai for a bag of tea! Not willing to pay a fortune for tea, we left the market empty handed, although our tongues were burned from tasting all of that free hot tea. I think Rachel would have loved it--that kid drinks tea like it's going out of style.
All in all, this weekend was like a scene from Disney's
Mulan. From lucky crickets to pouring tea just right, I think I did Mushu proud.
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