China #9 - A New Year in Shangai

September 9th, 2012

Hi there folks.....well, its official.....I am now back in Shanghai!!!! i had a great summer seeing folks and catching up with many in the USA....from seattle to philly, from denver to jersey....it was a great summer....a bit hot, but overall things were relaxing and filled with laughing and hearing stories from the past year and beyond....thanks to all who i saw and stayed with....it was nice to hear your updates in person....i am headed back to the states over next summer...so if i missed you, hopefully we will connect this coming summer.....

i have been back in shanghai for just over a month....and what a crazy, busy time it has been....i have moved into a new apt....same complex, but a different place (pictures to follow)....i have been given a new classroom...funny stories here...more to follow...i have met 41 new teachers here at SCIS...which sounds ridiculous when i tell you we only have about 90 teachers to begin with....but it has been a great thing....i have spent many days and night showing people all around this city...and i have started school....which is always a lot of work.....BUT....the year for work has started off well, and so far i am much happier than last year with my situation.....the new folks have breathed new life into this place and people actually are smiling and excited to be here...its a great feeling.....

but let's get to the pictures and i'll tell the stories along the way.....as you can see from the shot below, for the first time in my life, i decided to fly executive class back to china....its a 14 hour flight and we earned a bonus last year that i put toward flying in this manner....and i have to say...it was AH-MAZE-ING!!!!! i have no idea why i have not done this before....okay, actually its rather expensive, but its totally worth it....the seat that you see below, turns into a bed and for the first time ever, i got some sleep on a long flight....it rocked.....the food was good, the movies were good, i had no one next to me....i will do this again, but only on the really long flights....this is what i have decided to do as an adult :)  gotta love it....

thanks air canada...it was a great trip :)  woot!!!!

once i was back in shanghai, things started happening fast...this place has sooooooooo much to do and see and experience, and it felt like i picked up from last year....a friend had her mom visting town, so they were headed to a brunch on the bund (the river area you see above) and they invited me along....it was a very warm and muggy day, but we almost had blue skies....so of course i went for the view and the company....the food was pretty darn good too....but this was the shot i took from their balcony at the restaurant....i do love this view....

  
as some of you may remember, i had to move my things at the end of last year into a new apt....so i decided i would show you how it is shaping up....i am in the same complex and there are some new perks with this place, but overall it is smaller and less pretty than my last place....but very functional and works for me....in the shot above you can see my dining room....the glass circle on the far wall is one of the perks, as it lets me display life stuff....and can be back lit....the doorway on the left goes to a full bath with a shower and the doorway on the right leads to the kitchen...you can also see a polka dotted thing to the left, and this is the door to may spare bedroom (come on over for a visit!!!!)

this next shot above is looking from my dining room into my living room and enclosed balcony....it has been too hot to use this so far, but someday it will be cooler and less humid....someday....this was before i put any art of the walls, so it looks a bit less sterile now...but that is still coming along....not finished yet...its hard when your walls are cement...need to borrow a drill....

and last, but not least, this is my kitchen....the reason i had to show this was because i have been lucky enough to get an oven with this place....this is rather rare in china and many other places overseas....yes, i will need to guess at temperatures as the numbers on the dial are missing....but its exciting to have one of these....and located just next to the oven is the washing machine - yes, for laundry....gotta love that in your kitchen ;) all-in-all its a nice and cosy place...i think i have worked out the storage and space issues and am now in the process of making it look better....but i am not much of a "nester"...so putting art on the walls is probably the extent of what i will do....come for a visit!!!!
 

on with the show....i decided to take a picture of a lady i see all the time on the way to my friend's place....yep, she is a tailor...on the street, with a very old fashioned sewing machine....you still make it move by pumping with your foot....she of course recognizes me now and waves hello every time i walk past....she usually has quite a few customers, as she has set up shop across the street from the hutang near me, where lots of folks live and most of the have no electricity or running water....and she does their tailoring and fixing of things....i just lost a button on a shirt, so i will need to try her out :)

school, as i said, has been extremely different this year....the admin is going out of its way to treat us well and give us little thank-yous...its quite nice....and one of the best ones they have given us this year was a river cruise on the Huangpu in shanghai....this is the river you see in all of the pictures of the bund....and lucky us, it was on the night of the full blue moon....as we were walking to the boat, i took this picture of the moon rising and linked it up with one of the many cranes in shanghai....not bad, as it looks like the moon is hanging from the chain of the crane.....

this was the boat we went on....as you can see it is sponsored by a corporation...all of the boats are well lit and have a sponsor....and there are quite a few...it was a two hour river cruise and below you can see some of the fun shots i took along the way :) it was a beauty of a night....
 

this first shot is of me and lindsey, acting out the bad "chinglish" on the boat - if you can't read what it says - its...."The working orea The tourist halts"....lovin it....we tried to look as serious as we could...that way you would follow the rules better ;)
 

this is a shot of the pearl tower all lit up....i love this building....it is a tv building that you can go inside...i need to get back over there again this year, as the last time i was there was when i was a tourist in china....not living here...i need to walk on the glass floor and take some shots....and i hear the museum at the base of the tower is pretty good concerning the history of shanghai....

in this shot you can see the financial buildings in pudong, the tallest one being the one outlined in blue that looks like a bottle opener....over to the right you can see the moon...and the boat in front of the buildings was one of my favorites on the river that night....it has dragons on the front of it....and was lit up well...its sponsor was china telecom....one of the the country's phone companies

the last shot from the cruise is the other side of the bund.....the building with the flower like top, is the westin....one of my favorites....the architecture on this side is quite different than the other side, as many of the lower buildings look like they should be found in europe...love all of the lights....
 

as i mentioned above, i got a new lab this year, in a different part of the buildings of school....this used to be a normal math classroom...but they have remade it into a science lab...its a bit small, but has all of the necessary parts....the funniest thing about this though was that when they built the room, and took all of the teaching things out of it - bulletin boards, a white board or two, the smart board, the clock....they gave them to other classrooms...so literally when we got here, it looked all pretty and new, but there was no way a person could teach in here....i just thought that was funny....it seems to be working well, but we start labs this week and we'll see how it works with 23 kids...a bit tight....
 

its funny, they also left me no wall space....so great storage, not that i have any stuff, but trying to put things on the wall is definitely a process.....i need to figure out where i will put the goggles holder next....it has to have enough space for 120 kids....yep....i have quite a few this year....6 classes, almost all at or over maximum capacity...this place is a lot of work...but again, my kids are great....so that i can deal with.....

the next few shots are things from around town that show some of my daily sights and experiences....i had to take a picture of this sign for my mom and her friends....look the toilet is more than a toilet....it is delicious and happy....i have no idea what that means....and it was NOT  a western toilet....so i am not really sure what they mean by this....thoughts????

people wanted to know this summer if shanghai was a clean place....and the answer is yes, with a little asterisk next to it.....we have tons of street cleaners like this guy..notice the uniform and the style of broom....plus he has to carry his little wheeled part himself....there are tons of these folks everywhere in shanghai....so its a clean place....but lots of folks spit everywhere....and i mean everywhere....and people go to the bathroom everywhere....personally i think these two things are gross, but maybe they are why we have so many people cleaning streets...because really, when you look at the street, it looks clean.....

the other thing that surprised most people this summer was how anything and everything can be delivered to your house.....and i mean anything.....so i took a picture of a mcdonalds delivery guy on a scooter....he wouldn't smile....but this is the way most things are delivered to your door...its amazing what you see on motor scooters here...i will try and make those a focus with some pictures in the near future....i have seen everything on them....

for the next two pictures, the school started the year off with a good luck lion dance and acrobats...i only had my iphone, so the pictures are not that great....but i loved these lions and thought it was a cool good luck thing for the school to do....there are two guys inside the lion...one is standing on the other ones legs....that's how they get the height....
 

we also had performers and this guy was amazing at balancing...he is on a wooden board, that is balancing on 5 metal tubes that are all rolling around on each other....again, not very clear....but i thought he was incredible....acrobats are very big in shanghai...i am hoping to go to one of the shows sometime this year, as i never made it to one last year.....

i love this last shot of the bund, as it was taken out on of the windows of a bar along the bund....i took some of the new folks out for dinner and drinks with friends of mine and was able to take this beauty of a shot, as it was a somewhat clear evening....it just makes me smile, so i thought you might like it too....
 

the last shot of me is a traditional one of me with a beer...taken of me on the river cruise....with their cool fish tank and staring waitstaff, i know i am stunning :).....it was a fun trip on the boat and it was terrific gesture by the school....it has been a great start here in shanghai and i have a fun fall/winter breaks already planned...i am next traveling to kuala lumpur,  malayasia to see some friends and relax in october, friends from the ice are headed here in november and i am doing a trip in india for the winter break.....so things are shaping up nicely

i hope you enjoyed this update....i will try and have another out about shanghai sometime in the near future and then will probably send out one about my time in malayasia....woot!!!!  if you have any questions or comments or an update of your own, please send them my way....i hope everyone is well and happy and enjoying their fall or spring....talk soon.....