Living in Downtown Shanghai

Yeah, so my plan about getting caught up from the last month of our adventures here kinda fell through.  Too many crazy adventures and so little time!  Or sleep, for that matter, but that's a different story.

I thought I'd try to summarize everything that's happened here since that first weekend...

So for the first month we've lived at the Faculty Club at the Xuhui campus.  It's basically a hotel --
here's some pics!

One of the first things we had to do in China was to set up cell phones....that was interesting to say the least.  You can order phones online (Chinese ebay = Taobao) and they arrive in packages like this:

Then you can just stroll down the street to the nearest magazine stand guy who just happens to also sell phone plans and SIM cards...

This is probably the second thing you should get when you arrive in China --

So life in Shanghai.... pretty much amazing.  Things are rather cheap, especially when you're talking about street food.  5 - 10 kuai (less than $2 USD) will get you delicious foods on sticks (lamb, chicken, beef, vegetables, seafood, etc.) and it's all cooked right in front of you!

Quail eggs!

Candied fruit!

The city is HUGE.  Interesting architecture all over the place --most of it has European influence it seems, but definitely along the Bund (on the Huangpu River) and in the French Concession (not too far from our Xuhui campus).  However, things on the eastern banks of the Huangpu (Pudong) are more of what you'd normally expect in a huge city.

Shanghai World Financial Center -- "The Bottle Opener"

 

View of the city from the "World's Highest Bar"

 

Pudong at night

East Nanjing St (Las Vegas Strip, minus the casinos)

Traffic in Shanghai is different too.  So many bikes!  And being a pedestrian can be a little trying sometimes.  Even if you have the green light, there's usually a game of chicken that starts between you and the approaching taxi. 

And for the nighlife...clubbing is a super popular thing to do.  As a foreigner, club promoters are pretty interested in giving you free things so you can enjoy the club and make it look even more appealing to the locals.

For the past month, we didn't just run rampant through the streets of Shanghai -- we had classes too.  Susan and Weiqi (language and culture teachers) were just wonderful.  Susan was so patient with us as we struggled through phrases like "Wo xuexi hanyu" (I study Chinese) and she even taught us Pengyou!  Weiqi gave us some incredible insight into the Chinese culture and let us ask pretty much any question you can think of.  That led to some pretty interesting class discussions, let me tell you.

Once we finished those classes, we took them out to dinner at Grandma's (easily the BEST food we've had in Shanghai) and karaoke at Haoledi!

We also took a different culture class with Dianne (continuing our cultural dimension analysis) that helped us to organize our thoughts about the Chinese culture as we started to adjust.  She actually just went back to the US a couple days ago to organize things back at Purdue, teach ME 290 and help people sign up for ETA 2014.  We're also taking an online systems course with Professor Krousgrill who has been incredibly flexible to help accommodate our schedule in Xuhui.

 

Besides taking classes and exploring the city during the week, we've also had some awesome weekend trips!!  We also got to celebrate Chinese New Year about 5 times!  Look for those stories in my next couple posts!

Also, we're moving out to the Minhang campus today.  And we're headed on a 9-day backpacking adventure through Yunnan Province!  More on that later.