China: Lao Wai (Foreigner)

 Sunday, March 31 10:30pm

Today Megan and I ventured out of Shanghai to a neighboring village about an hour away by bus. The Zhujiajiao Ancient Town was our destination. On the way, Megan I and I discussed how her school worked in Shanghai. Students that boarded at the school slept 4 to a room, Chinese Teachers slept 2 to a room and foreign teachers, like Megan, had their own room. I asked if this created any resentment between foreign teachers and locals and she felt there was. She also said that the expectations and pressure were much higher for local teachers as opposed to foreigners, which she took offense to. Chinese teachers are observed countless times a year, whereas Megan was only been observed twice a semester last school year and even less this year. She said that their bonuses, yes those things that people work extra hard to earn, are tied to 'satisfaction surveys.' She explained that a part of the bonus comes from surveys from the kids and surveys from the parents. Other parts of the bonus come from observations and test scores. I found this very interesting.

Once we arrived, we found our way to the water village. It was spectacular!! There were so many alley ways to visit that had street vendors and street food. One of the foods was 'stinky tofu.' Stinky doesn't even begin to explain the pungent odor coming from that food!! Even the locals were holding their nose. Someone must like it because it is everywhere!

We visited Shanghai Ancient Cultural Center, Post Office of Qing Dynasty, Kezhi Garden, Town's God Temple, Quanhua Art Yuanjin Buddhist Temple, and Shanghai Handicrafts Exhibition. 

While walking around, we frequently heard the phrase "Lao Wai," as people stared at or took pictures of us. Lao Wai means foreigner. Megan finally started replying back, "Yes we are!," in Chinese. The looks on their faces was priceless as we all giggled. For some reason, we stood out more here than in Shanghai.

After grabbing noodles and dumplings for lunch, we decided to head back to the bus stop. Woah!! The line was super long. And one thing I learned quickly about the Chinese, is that they are even less patient than I am. They are always pushing and 'cutting' in line. Did I mention how much pushing they do?? Wow! The line moved up one step as people boarded the bus and I got a shove and a signal to move up that step!!

Boarding and exiting any and all transportation, I've learned that its best if I just sit back for 30 seconds and let them do their thing, then I can calmly do mine.

We made it back to People's Square in Shanghai. By now you've noticed I haven't mentioned the use of a squat toilet yet. Today was my firs legitimate 'chance' to use one. While we were waiting in line for the bus, I decided, hesitantly, that I would check out the restroom. It was as I suspected... Squat toilets only, with what could only be urine on the floors, and doors that didn't shut. I quickly turned and joined Megan back in line. So when we got back to the city, we stopped in at a nice hotel and I found an 'appropriate' restroom.

Next top for me was the Shanghai Circus World to take in the acrobat show: ERA. This relatively small, circular arena was perfect! The acrobats were absolutely breathtaking. I've encounters bits and pieces of acrobatic shows in the US, but an entire show just for this was delightful. I can't comprehend how their bodies bend in that way! 

One thing I learned today regarding the metro. If while you are riding and the train stops at the next exit and a Kenny G song comes, you have to get off because in just a few seconds, the lights will go out and you have to pick up the next train. Ask me how I know.

**9.53 miles clocked today.

Apple Store-Lujiazui

East Nanjing Rd and Me with a Coke!

The view from the Bund. The fantastic Pearl Tower is behind me.

Yu-Yuan

China: Metro Line 2

 

Saturday, March 30 10:00pm

Today was an awesome day. Actually, it began last night after my blog post. I got over the shock that I was in and decided to go walk around my area a bit, with the comfort that I knew where I was now. I walked around for a hour or so, taking in life in this part of Shanghai. There are lots of small shops and street food around and a little market that purchased water for $0.23 a bottle!! I also purchased chocolate filled cupcakes, or so I thought. It turns out, that after talking with Megan that its not chocolate filled but instead red-bean mush filled!! I will still try them, but imagine the disappointment if I had bit in thinking delicious chocolate would be filling my mouth!!

Today started by meeting Megan at 7:15am at The Camel Sports Bar in the French Concession area to watch some of the NCAA basketball tournament. It was pretty cool that in the midst of everything Chinese, there was this Americanized bar. 

After the first round of games, we ventured off down the French Concession area in search of the metro. We found Line 1 and then changed to Line 2 at People's Square. This terminal reminded of Grand Central with all that was going on. Once on Line 2, we traveled to Lujiazui where we saw the beautiful Pearl Tower, the Apple Store, Shanghai World Financial Center building (the bottle opener), Jin Mao building, and walked through two beautiful parks. Interesting fact, the Jin Mao building was the tallest in Shanghai until the Japanese built the SWFC building next door. Well, the Chinese couldn't live with a Japanese building holding their record so they're in the process of building a building next door to SWFC to regain the top honor.

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel was the next adventure. In this tunnel, ,you ride a mini-tram under the Huangpu River. This wasn't an ordinary ride. This 5 minute ride took you through psychedelic lights and was interestingly narrated, which accompanying music. It was very Disney-futuristic and was interesting, to say the least. :-)

This ride let us off where we could walk the Bund waterfront area and see the entire skyline. We took this to East Nanjing Road, which is similar to Times Square Area, with lots of shops and people. It is also the location of another Apple Store.

We caught a cab and took it to the Yu-Yuan area where streets were lined with "traditional" architecture and the lovely red lanterns. Yu-Yuan means garden and silly me thought garden meant flowers. Nope. Garden in this area was rock gardens. This area was beautiful!!

After all of the walking, we took a cab to a restaurant that Megan knew of that had delicious dumplings. Xiao Long Bao, little dragon dumplings, hit the spot!! This gave us the energy to continue on. :-)

Back to Line 2 we went and then got off a few stops later to see the Jingan Temple. It was a magnificent temple in the middle of all of the skyscrapers. Fascinating. 

Back to Line 2 we went to stop at my hostel. We found my hostel easily, this time!! After showing Megan around we decided to stop in at one of the massage places on my street to get a foot massage. I think you can gather where this story goes... Needless to say we declined to enter all three places near me and decided to book another place instead up the road. You guessed it, back to Line 2.

After relaxing for an hour at my hostel, Megan and I grabbed a cab to take us to our 'legitimate' foot massage.  After our previous encounters, we were still skeptical but it turns out everything was on the up and up. For $30, we got an hour and half foot massage, pineapple buns, pork buns, and sugarcane and water chestnut juice!! It was THE BEST massage I've ever received. 

On the back to Line 2, we stopped to grab a bite for dinner. We found this place called "Leisure Restaurant." It was a rotating sushi bar. We ordered 4 rolls and they were fantastical!! The last roll had kiwi, pear, strawberry, crab, and something else that I couldn't recognize. I was shocked that all of the flavored worked so well together. 

It's now 10:00pm and I've made it back to the hostel and had a great conversation with Ray. Talking with him gave a terrific ending to a great day. 

Good night! 

**I just plugged my UpBand into my phone and realized that I walked 10.53 miles today!! The crazy thing is we could have walked a whole lot more!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

China: Lost Doesn't Even Begin To Explain It

 Friday, March 29 7:00pm

What a day. I don't evn know where to begin. While at Chicago O'Hare Airport, awaiting the final leg of my trip, I ran into Jason Beghe, the actor from Californication, Last Resort, and Chicago Fire. That was pretty cool. While I knew that the flight from Chicago to Shanghai was going to be long, 15 hours long, I didn't quite realize HOW LONG THAT WAS!! It was eternity!! I watched 4 movies, listened to music, and tried many, many times to sleep without success. I finally was able to sleep the last 4 hours or so, which is the time I normally go to sleep in the US. 

I arrived at Pudong Airport and was quickly thrust into the heard of hundreds of people heading to the one line to get into immigration. After getting through with no problems, I headed to the Maglev Train to begin the trip to my hostel. The Maglev reached speeds of 300kph (200mph)!! It was fantastic to experience. 

Following the Maglev, I hailed a taxi and showed him the address to my hostel. We started traveling, and the books were right regarding the drivers here...crazy and dangerous! We finally got to my destination, or so I thought. He let me out of the cab and I paid him the $9 for the fare. 

Now it was real. I was in Shangnai, in the middle of the quaint sidewalk in a quiet part of town. However, my hostel was nowhere in site. Nowhere!! I knew from reading reviews that people had had a hard time finding this hostel, but I initially wasn't too concerned, because I credit myself for being good with directions. It is at this point that I should note, I am good with directions in English. This quaint little street was all Chinese. What was I todo but get my iPhone out and turn on maps. I was glad to see that even though my data was off, I could still access the maps. But what good were the maps if the maps were in Chinese words and street signs were in Chinese characters? I'll tell you; they were no good. I was lost. Very,very, very lost. 

After following "the blue dot" and not seeming to get to where I was going, I started asking people if they could help. Well, they all spoke Chinese. And the ones that looked at my map, told me a different direction every time. I spent an hour literally walking up and down different little streets and was feeling hopeless. I stopped another taxi and showed him again where I wanted to go and he circled his hand as to indicate that I was in the right area. The sun was getting lower and I was truly starting to get into picnic mode.  I was going to call my friend that's here, but I wouldn't have even been able to tell her where I was. Tears were beginning to rise to the surface and for the first time I believed I had made a huge mistake with this trip.

I noticed a guard house protecting some elegant building so I went up to the guard to ask for help. Again, he couldn't help me but saw a guy he knew coming out of the building and called him over. The guy looked at my map and didn't have a good idea so he called a girl coming out of the building. This girl spoke English. I wanted to cry immediately realizing there was hope. She looked at my map and started to give me directions and then asked, "Can I show you?" I of course was in dept to her. We started walking back the way that I had come. We got to where she thought it should be and it wasn't there!! She got on her phone and called my hostel and they talked for a while and finally we had directions to get to my place. We walked another 10 minutes, all the while she was showing me places I could eat and where a drugstore was and then, Eureka!! She found it! I could have hugged her, but I settled for a hand-over-hand  handshake. I offered to compensate her, but of course she denied it.  I checked in successfully and got to my room and just laid on the bed. Tears were released from my eyes, out of stress , weariness, and relief. I made it. 

I'm sitting in the common room now. People are playing pool, Bob Marley is on the speakers, another guy is gently playing his guitar and I'm sitting here thankful that everything worked out today. Cheers!

Jason Beghe @ Chicago O'Hare

Flying over Siberia

On the Maglev Train traveling 200 mph!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

China: And So, My Journey Begins...

 

 

...at 3:30am. Yeah, I know that the adrenaline will kick in soon but this is EARLY!! I'm sitting in RDU now, 2 hours ahead of my flight, because I'm generally a rule follower. This flight will take me to LaGuardia, then LaGuardia to Chicago. After that, it's Game On!! Shanghai, here I come.

Last night, I Facetimed with my family for a little while. Along with the general well-wishes, my mom, being a mom and a nurse, made sure I had all the possible medicines that I could need and that i had received the particulate masks she sent me. I think I have 5 pounds of meds in my bag!! I also informed her that I had been religious with consuming Airborne each day for the last week. I bought this "No Jet Lag" homeopathic stuff that I'll try on my flights. I'm not a huge believer in "those" remedies, but I'll try anything to minimize the, fairly certain, jet lag that will accompany my trip.

While I was talking with them, my three and a half year old nephew got on and asked if I was going to come back from China. I assured him that I would. :-) He also asked that I bring him a panda bear. I'll do my best.

After talking with them, I decided to go ahead and "check in" for my flight on my phone, like I typically do. This time however, the screen said "error" and that I needed to check in in person. Well, of course, that made me a little nervous. I went back through all of my emails to confirm that I indeed had a flight and that it was due to leave when I thought it was. I'm certain they took my money so I figured it probably had something to do with the international flight. It turns out that I was correct. The attendant told me that that was standard. In my head I'm thinking, they could have added that bit of information to the error message.

That's it for now. My nerves are definitely higher than normal and last night laying in bed, I could have sworn that I could hear my heart beating outside of my chest. I'm confident that these nerves will be replaced with excitement, with my first, "Ni-Hao!"

--update: I'm actually at my gate now and I read the board that says, "Flight is Overbooked- $250 voucher for later flight." What?!?! First of all, how does this happen. Second of all, how do they decide who gets the boot?? Uh! Fingers crossed.

China: Planning, Planning, and More Planning

 

Ask me what I've been doing the last few weeks and I have 4 answers for you.

1) Working. Lots of school work getting this new 6th grade up and running.
2) Tennis. That's my release from a tense day at work.
3) Sleeping. I LOVE to sleep.
4) Planning. I need to feel prepared in life so when it comes to visiting another continent, well that just takes planning to an all new level for me.

I'm starting this blog here in the US, with the expectation that I personally will not be able to access it while traveling in China. So, I PLAN to email my posts to my friend Molly, who will upload for me each day. Thanks, Molly!

This whole idea of visiting China began years ago. I enjoy traveling and taking on new adventures. I've always wanted to visit an Asian country because I acknowledged how seemingly different their culture is. Then, my friend Megan that I taught with 2 years ago, left the US to go to Shanghai to teach. Since she's been in China, it brought back up all of those ideas of mine to visit that area of the world. I never acted on it because flights were just too expensive.

Just a few weeks ago, I filed my taxes and saw that I had a pretty sizable refund coming to me and bored that night, I starting searching on Orbitz. As I had expected, flights to China over my summer break were pushing $2000....otherwise known as TOO much. For the heck of it, I decided to put in the dates for my Spring Break. I couldn't believe my eyes! The prices for that time of year (6 weeks away at the time) were in the $1300s!! I excitedly got on Facebook to chat with Megan and she confirmed that she hadn't seen them lower than that.

This initially random google search put wheels in motion for me pretty quickly. I had so many things to do to begin the planning process. I first had to confirm that Megan was going to be in town because she's ALWAYS travelling to cool places when she's not teaching. I next had to ask for permission to take  a day off of work. Well, Megan was in Vietnam while I was trying to connect. In the meantime, I started searching for housing accommodations and read lots and lots and lots of reviews and found a few places that seemed perfect for me. I finally got in touch with Megan and her reply was that she wasn't sure when the next break was and she wouldn't find out for 2 more weeks. I decided that I couldn't wait two more weeks, because that would be cutting it too close to get my VIsa.

After hearing back from my principal giving me permission to take the day off, I decided that I was just going to hope for best and hope that Megan was in town while I was there. If she wasn't, I would just have to figure it out, much like I'm doing when I head up to Beijing without her. I purchased my flight tickets.I booked my room in Rockwood Hostel in Shanghai and Old Beijing Square in Beijing. My plans were to fly into Shanghai, stay 3-4 days, take the high-speed train north to Beijing, stay 3-4 days and then fly home.

Following the booking of the flight and rooms, I had to fill out a lengthy Chinese Visa application and mail it in along with MY PASSPORT, which terrified me, because I only had 5 weeks before my trip. It all came back safely in a week and I felt much better. I also found out that Megan was going to be in town for the few days that I was in Shaghai. That left me with Beijing. What was I going to do ALL BY MYSELF in Beijing?

Here enters, Snow, the Chinese teacher at my school. It turns out that Snow is from Beijing!! I then had a few conversations with Snow and about what to do and where to go. She typed up a long list of places I should visit, food I should eat, and sites I should see. The most comforting thing she did was to give me the names, phone numbers and email addresses of some friends of hers that are in Beijing, that speak English and that are willing to help me if I need anything. That was huge!!

With all of the major ideas in place, that left me with the details and hours, upon hours of surfing the web, and scanning a book or two. I created many "Notes" pages on my computer, that transfer to my phone and iPad, with details such as addresses of my hotels in English and Chinese, potential itineraries, helpful phrases, budgets and so on. I've been adding to them daily it seems. Because I had my places to visit in a list, I couldn't visualize where everything was. So I went to google maps and just started entering in addresses of all of my places to see where they were in relation to everything else. I then discovered a feature on google maps that lets you "Make a Map." On this feature, you can add pins, which isn't new, add details that you'd like to include, add all of the places you want and save the map. The coolest feature is that you can draw a line connecting point to point. In my case, I had three line-paths drawn in Shanghai, signifying each of the days I was going to be there. The same is true for Beijing. The interesting thing to me is whether I will be able to actually use the maps while in China....we'll see.

While I was planning my trip, I noticed on Facebook that a tennis friend of mine was getting ready to go to China. When she returned a few days ago, we met for dinner and she shared with me some of her experiences during her trip. She also lent me some books of hers and some Chinese currency, which is nice, because my bank didn't have any Yuan and I was a little nervous about trying to find it when I arrived. So, now I'm all set with money for a little bit.

It seems with 10 days to go, I'm ready. Am I nervous? Of course!! I don't know their language, I don't know what to expect, I don't know if my plans to Skype and Email will work. I have tons of uncertainty that will have to be just that, until I throw myself out there with the millions.

Here are the two maps I've made for my proposed travels:

Shanghai My Way
Beijing Discovered

Necessities for the trip...yes, that's a roll of TP that I will be taking...BYOTP!!