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Published: August 25th 2012
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Fruit
Some of the fruit you can buy here at Wal-Mart. Let's just talk about how questionable all of them smelled. I almost fell into the toilet today. Almost. It was a near miss. I’m sorry but you cannot call your city the most modern city in the world if you call toilets a hole in the ground. The problem is is that it is really humid here in Shanghai, and so you have to drink a lot of water during the day to stay hydrated, which is fine. But when you drink a lot of water, you have to go to the bathroom a lot, and when you have to go to the bathroom a lot, you increase your chance of falling into holes in the ground by a lot. Move over SARS, it's going to be death by toilet.
I’m getting a little more accustomed to Shanghai. To be honest, it kind of just feels like Chinatown in San Francisco, only instead of Cantonese everyone is speaking Mandarin. Most of our group here is made up of blondes, so it really does feel like the San Francisco Bay Area because the 20 blonde kids in our group compared to the 26 million Chinese people is pretty much exactly how it is back home. For those of you that read
my blog that aren’t from the Bay Area, it’s 80% Chinese, 10% Indian, 8% Hispanic, 1% White, and 1% everything else, give or take a few percentage points here and there. So basically, China feels like home. Well, minus the whole toilet thing.
The Shanghai program is slightly different than the London study abroad program I did this past summer. In London, we spent the first week getting to know the city really well. In Shanghai, we’ve spent the past few days learning how to communicate with one another, and thus we have not seen much of the city. Today we ventured into downtown for the first time and it was beautiful, although we didn't get to see much. The university I’m studying at is the closest one there is to the city center, but that isn’t saying much because shanghai is so big. However, if four people split a taxi, you can get almost anywhere you want in the heart of shanghai for the equivalent of 1 USD each. Or, you can take the bus anywhere for 2 RMD, or about 33 cents. The metro is also a good option but that’s a little more expensive—about 50 cents
Shanghai Skyline
Shanghai's famous skyline. I can't wait to go back and see it lit up at night! per ride, but it increases the further you ride it. However, it is still way less expensive than London’s 2 pounds per ride, which translates to almost $4.
I keep having to remember that things aren’t in USD. I went into the store the first night to buy a bottle of water and was like “yikes! $2 for a bottle of water??” Until I was like “yo, I gotta divide this by 6 to get back to USD” and I calmed down quite a bit. It's hard though because some of the stuff you can get here is really sketchy, so I spend a lot of time trying to sort through the sketchy stuff versus the safer stuff.
China is pretty funny. Almost everything in the states is made in China, so you can find almost all of the brands here in Shanghai. The only reason I know that the brands are the same is because I can recognize the colors (brand recognition right here) but not the words. However, they are a million times more expensive here! For example, iPhones are made here but they are the equivalent of $1000 USD! It's insane.
In other news,
Pizza
Just like London, Shanghai does not have any of the same kinds of pizza that the United States does. However, unlike London, Shanghai does not have any edible sounding pizza. my roommate moved in today. She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Mandarin, so we are a solid match. Our charades are good though. I was able to sign to her which one was my bed (but only because I was sitting on it). I also gave her her gift today which was a t-shirt from Stanford University and a keychain from the SFO airport. Not much, but I can tell she really liked it because smiles are universal. Her English name is Micaela and she calls me by my Chinese name since I can’t remember her Chinese name and she can’t pronounce my English name. The only problem is sometimes I forget my Chinese name and she's standing there yelling my name and I don't realize I'm supposed to respond. I'm getting there though.
My roommate and I have been practicing our English and Chinese, respectively. We've placed post-it notes all over the room that label everything from the fridge to the air conditioning to the lamps to the beds, in English, simplified characters, and pinyin. Micaela has also taught me how to say McDonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut. We both love McDonalds so I can tell we're going to get along well. The only unfortunate part is that I have yet to see anything that resembles Mexican food, and I can't tell you how bad I'm craving a burrito right now. I'm not sure I'm going to last 4 months without one...
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