Mike In China

Wow. Sorry I haven't updated my blog for such a long time. I took my camera to my classes one day and have been trying to make a post of my day in pictures but for some reason blogger just hasn't been letting me. Basically I would try every other night or so, get frustrated and give up. So now I will just leave you with some typing instead. Apparently Shanghai is experiencing a really warm fall. In fact, I can still walk around at night with shorts and a t-shirt on. I wore a long-sleeve t-shirt the other day and it was just a little too warm while I was walking around. Its pretty crazy. I hear that back home there has already been some snow. Its really funny because even the locals talk about how warm it still is. I want to grad one of them and say, "LISTEN HERE CHINAMAN, do you see the thick, intense layer of smog over your city? Here's a hint: don't expect the following falls to be any cooler." It really is crazy how bad the smog is some days. Some mornings I wake up and looking out our balcony on the 27th floor we can barely see the buildings two blocks away. Its gross. All the busses, cars and trucks just have the worst exhaust ever, it makes you choke. On a brighter note, the fact that it has been so warm has helped me avoid the fact that I packed clothes planning on living in a tropical climate for a year. Luckily my wonderful parents and grandma have came to the rescue and gave me money to get warm clothes. I was very worried about finding clothes that fit, especially jeans. I finally went on a hunt yesterday and it was quite the process but I came out victorious. And WOW am I fashionable now. Diesel, Dolce & Gabana and some other designer I haven't heard of jeans. Its funny because the cheapest jeans you can find here are all "designer" jeans, aka really good ripoffs. So I got three pairs of really nice jeans for under $50 US. It took awhile to find ones that fit, but I managed to. It was funny because I went with Chi who is Chinese but has lived in Canada and the US all her life and the woman kept asking if we were married. Chi thinks she might have told her yes on accident and then the woman kept telling her how rich she must be because she is married to a white man. That cracked me up. Today was parent's day at one of my school so I had 20 to 30 parents sitting in most of my classes today. It was a little stressful because there was a lot of pressure to do a good job but I got a lot of good feedback and that made it worth it. OH! This Friday our company is having an office Halloween Party! Its crazy because all these Chinese women are trying to plan a Halloween Party but they have no idea what Halloween is and keep asking us for ideas. We don't really know what to say because basically little kids put on costumes and go get candy and grownups put on costumes and go get drunk. I think it is a booze free party and they are trying to come up with a lot of games so we will see how things turn out. I'm having problems finding a costume because obviously its not exactly a big holiday here. I will keep you posted on how things turn out. I will post more often to make sure to not confuse people on whether or not I am still alive.

The rest of my week off was actually pretty boring. I'm trying really hard to budget my money to travel and that doesn't leave much for eating out or going out. My break was thus comprised mostly of sleeping and DVD watching now that we have a DVD player. I do have a couple interesting moments however. So first, Will and I went to get our haircut and I thought, why not a shampoo also, together they still cost less than three US dollars. Then I thought, why not get a shave too. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Do not hire someone to shave your face in a country where no one has facial hair. Literally I sat there for 45 minutes while the top layers of my skin were scraped away by some Chinese girl. And she could tell I was in pain so eventually the whole staff (which consisted of 9 people on a Tuesday night at 9pm at a very small barber shop: Communism) was standing over me trying to help as I got every hair ripped from my two day old facial hair. It was seriously horrible. They realized that they couldn't handle it and asked to shave my upper lip and I said no because I know its sensitive and would just bleed so I had to walk home with a two day old mustache. Good thing I'm in China and no one knew the difference. Later that night, Will and I went out and got directed to some random bar on the Bund (which should have been a sign because that is the rich area). We walked in as they were about to close in an hour and it was the type of place where everyone immediately looked at me, analyzed how much my clothes cost and then chose to ignore me or not. Then I got the eyes from older women who were making out with their rich older husbands that they hate and were entranced by the young poor kid and the older gay men who were also entranced by the younger poor kid. I felt dirty. Too bad the bar was closed otherwise maybe I would have gotten a drink bought for me! Then the next day I almost spent the night in Chinese jail. Will and I hung out with on of the Chinese girls in our company and on the way home we walked through some street vendors. There was some granola nut thing that I have been seeing around that I ask to check out and Susy (the Chinese girl) got us a sample and then helped us buy some, which ended up being ridiculously expensive. We tell the man that it is too expensive and try to leave. The guy doesn't give it up and starts yelling at Susy in Chinese and starts getting up in her face. He tells us she has to buy blah blah blah we go get the police involved but they don't care because as we were informed later, they don't want problems and don't care who's right. The man was being very aggressive and would only get in Susy's face and try to talk to her, WHICH IS NOT COOL Picking on girls is not ok with Americans. So we were getting right back in his face yelling profanity at him in English. Things escalated and a fist fight almost broke out in some Chinese square with cops right there. Susy ended up just paying because she was afraid and I was not happy with that but I guess I didn't go to jail for punching some Chinese man. We came to find out later that it is a really good thing a fight didn't occur because all the other vendors around him would have joined in and they are notorious for carrying knifes. I guess in hind site it's not worth getting stabbed for less than 5 US dollars (which is a lot of money here). And for those of you that are wondering, yes I bought a large belt buckle that is an American flag in the shape of the United States. Don't worry there is also a bald eagle on it. Just making sure to represent.

Happy Chinese National Day! Or week. Or something like that... All I know is that I have a week off of work and there are big fireworks shows every other night. Two of our co-workers that live together had us over on Saturday night to watch the big fireworks show from their balcony that over looks Century Park where the fireworks were. It was a pretty good show (it lasted an hour) and there were some fireworks I hadn't seen before. There were crazy amounts of people everywhere and cab drivers were basically ignoring everyone that wasn't Chinese so that was frustrating. It is really great to have some time off to relax and explore Shanghai some more. We were talking and it is crazy because after this, we won't have two days off in a row until mid January which is a crazy long time from now. People keep asking about teaching and I don't know what else to say!? I go to class, teach the kids a couple new words or a song, act like a clown, bribe the children to behave with games involving candy, get fed a lunch which I rarely eat much of other than the rice, and then teach some more kids the same thing. I really like the kids and try to play around with them as much as I can between classes. They like running up to me and calling me monkey teacher because Chinese men don't have hair on their arms. We got paid on Friday and I was told I'm doing really well for a new teacher and that my boss was actually surprised with how well my reviews were, so that's good. We went back to the sushi place again and this time we ordered something that came to the table still flopping, literally the fish had just been killed and they placed the pieces of sushi on top of him and he would still flop his tail and open and close his mouth for awhile as we ate him. I'm starting to get nervous about the fact that I brought no winter clothes. I hope to have my mom send me some of mine but it might be expensive to have her ship a ton of jeans, sweatshirts and winter coats. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do. It's not cold yet but some nights you can tell that it is going to be. Hopefully I will have some exciting adventure to share to get more than one post in this week.