celeb stalking, china style

Those of you who know me in real life or are regular readers are mostly likely aware that I am celebrity obsessed. I've met a few movie stars/directors/musicians/former president in my day, but it never loses it's amazingness. I'm totally star struck. So, obviously, when I had the opportunity to 3. Take pictures with the stars of The Mummy III I couldn't resist!

I have to confess, I've never seen The Mummy III, but according to Twin the terra cotta warriors play a somewhat significant role in it.


There's three large pits FILLED with terra cotta warriors. Most of them haven't even been uncovered yet. The Chinese government is waiting for the preservation technology to advance more so they will be able to keep them in tact (when they were first uncovered all the warriors were fully painted, but the exposure to oxygen made it fade within minutes).


It was really incredible seeing the terra cotta warriors up close. While I was in southern California last summer I saw an exhibit of them at a museum, but seeing one up close is nothing compared to seeing a football field sized warehouse filled with them.

some things in life really ARE free

Even if it's not on purpose. I booked a hostel for a weekend trip to Hangzhou for Rod and myself and when we got there and they showed us the room, they were literally putting the bed together right then and there. There were wood shavings on the floor and tarps on the other furniture; I'm pretty sure they had just finished building the room 30 minutes before we arrived.

When I'm traveling I try to be really easy going, more so than I try to in my every day life because I know that nothing ever happens the way you expect it to, and fighting against small changes can lead to lots of frustration. It's easier to just give in and ride the wave than try to swim opposite the tide. In this case, though, I was totally not feeling the barely-completed room so I asked to be moved to a smaller room if they had something available, which serendipitously led to me and Rod 2. Accidentally scoring a free night in a hostel.

They took us to a twin room and told us we'd need to check out the next morning and switch to another room because it was already booked for the following day. Ok, I thought, I can work with that compromise. Well, the next day when I went to the front desk to switch rooms, they told us not to worry about it...but we had only paid for one night! When we checked out on Sunday (after staying a total of two nights), they never asked for the payment on the second night so we totally scored a free night!

There's no such thing as a free lunch...but if your waiter happens to forget to charge you for something, I say consider it a gift from someone up above and roll with it. And leave a generous tip.

shooting for the stars

After coming up with my top ten list for Rod's visit last month I decided to skim through my archives and refresh my memory on all the crazy/fun/horrible/hilarious experiences I've had in Shanghai. It was fun and I had forgotten several things that I blogged about, which made me realize I really need to document all the stories I have written down. You see, I keep a list of things to blog about...but usually don't blog about most of what's on the list.

Anyway, I'll be writing in more detail about my April 2009 Top Ten list over the next few days, but one thing I noticed, err, rather, did not notice while I was browsing past StrawberrySays entries was any type of "Goals for China" entry. How lame is that? I should have made some sort of record of things I wanted to accomplish or see or eat or WHATEVER while I was here, but now it's a little late considering my 10-month teaching contract is almost up.

However.

I do have one final goal for my remaining time in China.

Learn Chinese? Nah.
Make some business contacts? I wouldn't even know where to start.
Finally contact the magazine that keeps publishing my online food reviews about getting a REAL column in their publication? Too much work.

My goal is to get a minimum of two massages every week until I leave here. Friggin' awesome goal, right? Some naysayers out there might be thinking "But that doesn't even have anything to do with being in China!" to which I would reply "Au contraire! A one hour massage at a top-notch salon is only 10 bucks in China, something impossible to come by in America. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it while I go get my bi-weekly rub down."

7 month inch

NOW I know why I've been in a China rut recently! I glanced at my calendar today and realized I had missed my 7 Monthiversary with China on the 26th of this month (I don't know how I manage to forget it each month, as it also happens to coincide with pay day).

I know it's usually the "seven year itch" but this is China, everything here is on hyper-drive. It's like the concept of dog years, except it's China years. So, in this example, one month is equal to one year. Which, when you consider the amount of changes that happen in China in a span of 30 days compared to other nations, is pretty accurate.

So, yes, after seven months with China, I'm feeling a little...lackluster in our relationship. China just isn't the same China it was when we first met, y'know? China has changed, and admittedly, so have I. I'm not going to go so far as to say China and I need to part ways, but we definitely need to freshen things up a bit if this relationship is going to last. Hopefully, Rod's visit will be just what China and I need to rekindle our romance. I'll be seeing the same China I saw seven months ago, from the eyes of a newcomer, and that will be refreshing since I've gotten into a bit of routine here. Plus, I'm also going to be traveling to Xi'an, Huangzhou, and Beijing in the next month.

China and I might have a chance of making it work after all.

what doesn't kill us

I do this thing when I travel or take trips places. This very annoying, inconvenient thing.

I don't know what comes over me, but I suddenly want to be this chic-er, better dressed version of myself when I think of spending an extended period of time abroad. So, to expedite the process, I only bring chic, uncomfortable clothing.

Beggars can't be choosers, right?

So if I only bring one t-shirt and more than a dozen fashionable work blouses, I'll be forced to wear the fashionable work blouses, right?

Wrong. I'll just wear the one t-shirt every day and curse myself for being so lame and not packing more.

Of course, when I was packing to move to a country where it used to be common practice to bind women's feet, my size 10 self thought "Yeah, I'll only bring pumps and heels because then I'll be sure to always be cute! All the time! No matter what!"

Ya, well, walking for hours in black leather pumps in weather that is 78 degrees but "feels like 107" according to weather.com because of the humidity is not a combination that automatically brings "cute" to mind. It does, however, bring to mind the words "blister" and "backache".

Needless to say, I have been relying way too heavily on the two pairs of three dollar Old Navy flip flops I thankfully had the presence of mind to pack. I brought 10 pairs of shoes and all of them are heels, save the no-traction death-trap flip flops.

The thing that bugs me the most is that I literally had several pairs of sturdy Reef sandals in my hands ready to be put in my suitcase, but I put them away, deluding myself into believing that in China I would become that girl that wears heels everywhere.

Y'know, that girl that doesn't exist in real life. Like Carrie Bradshaw. Or a happy French woman (yeah, they wear heels everywhere, but have you ever seen one of them smile?).

So I've been surviving so far with my cheap-o shower sandals. But barely. All the flooring here is made out of cheap wanna-be marble, my guess is because it is cheaper than concrete. Well, slippery tiling and rain pretty much mean that I have to waddle everywhere for fear of falling on my ass. That is, when I'm not actually falling on my ass. Behold, my bruise (and the one t-shirt I brought to China):

It is actually much worse than it looks, I assure you. The entire right side of my body is still sore from my total full-body fall two days ago. I probably broke something, who knows. But so far it's not life threatening, hence not worth a trip to the scary Chinese doctor.

lots more pencils, lots more books, lots more students' dirty looks

Today is my first day of teaching, wish me...something, anything. I don't even care if it's "luck" at this point.

Hooray for 2-hour morning assemblies that cancel my 1st period 12th grade class! But I still have a bunch of 8th graders to contend with post-lunch.

Where's my lucky rabbit's foot when I need it?

now, turn your head and then cough

In order to get a Chinese visa to live or work in China, you have to turn in a bunch of paperwork, pay a big fee, and get a physical examination in the United States before you arrive. Oh, and apparently you ALSO need to get a physical examination when you get to China.

Do you remember getting a physical exam for high school or junior high? Probably not. In the United States they're pretty uneventful experiences, for my most recent one my doctor glanced at my chart, did a quick exam of my lungs with a stethoscope, took a quick look at my throat and ears, then signed me off as healthy and ready to work.

Not so in China.

Chinese physicals are much more intense than any kind of medical ANYTHING I've had done in the United States. I'm a pretty healthy girl, so I don't have a ton of experience in hospitals, but trust me, my Chinese hospital experience takes the cake.

To start things off, we had to leave the school at 6:45 in the morning. I'm still pretty out of it from the 15 hour time difference between here and home, anxious about teaching, and feel like a child because of the whole not being able to speak the host language thing, so I was pretty much a walking zombie when we got to the hospital, which was a good hour van ride away.

All eleven foreign teachers I'm working with were required to go through the physical examination. We handed someone at the front desk our passports, were given a form to fill out and a slip of paper with a number, then pointed in the direction of a waiting area.

In the waiting area numbers were called out slowly and we had to go into a little room where a webcam sat on the desk taking our photograph as the assistant grabbed our forms from us and inputed them into the system.

This whole time none of us have any idea what's going on, since none of us speak Chinese and no one there spoke English.

We all have to go change into gowns, which is where it got interesting. We put our belongings into small lockers, and then preceded to be pushed and shoved from one room to the next with no explanation at all. If hospitals could be assembly lines, this hospital would be the model to which all other hospitals aspired to be like. Each room had a different purpose, and each patient was seen for about 2 minutes maximum by each "doctor". Who even knows what kind of degrees these people had.

I had to have about half a dozen different procedures done, and it was all done so quickly that I didn't even have time to protest. I stood on this metal thing, that apparently took my weight and height through some kind of laser beam, but I didn't see or feel anything so I really don't know how it all worked.

Next, I was pushed into this dark room with one single light in the far corner. The being pushed thing was the most unnerving aspect of it all (at least initially), because it made me feel completely out of control of what was going on. I had a chest x-ray, but at the time didn't realize that was what was going on until the guy shoved my chest against the machine and shouted something in Chinese in my ear.

Then I had to get blood taken. I'm not even going to mention the statistics on dirty needles in China to you, but I had no choice so I did it. They looked clean to me, and it seemed like they were using new needles each time, but who knows what they did with the needles afterward or if they re-used them from day to day or what.

Next was an eye exam which was pretty standard. Every room was so big with just a small desk and a doctor sitting there. For some reason it reminded me of Saw in terms of the overall ambiance of the place (dark, grimy, full of shadows). It's never a good sign to be reminded of a horror movie when you're at the doctor. After testing my sight, the doctor shoved a light up my nose and then aggressively pointed for me to leave.

I sat in the hall with a bunch of other bewildered foreigners for a few minutes, waiting for the ultrasound room to be free. Both men and women had to get ultrasounds of their stomachs and lower abdomens. Good news people, I'm not pregnant! No actually, I still don't know what they were looking for and what they found, and I'll probably never know.

After being poked to the point of bruising by the ultrasound technician, I had to get an EKG. The EKG machine was very archaic looking (like everything else in the hospital) and instead of plastic sensors everything had little metal suction cups on it. Very strange.

Finally, I had my "general examination" which consisted of a woman nurse rubbing on my stomach then asking "You have surgery???" I was kinda confused as to whether she meant EVER, or if I was to have surgery sometime later that day, so I just went with "No".

After that, I was pulled back into the changing area, where I put my clothes back on and prayed that they used clean needles.

Note to self: don't get sick here.

it's raining cats and dogs

Or acid from all the air pollution, same difference.

The weather here has been completely crazy. The first day it was super sunny with blue skies (which I had heard were the Chinese equivalent of seeing a unicorn) and then the last few days have been very gray.

Not gray because it's going to rain or anything, just gray because the air is so filled with smog and other pollutants. Minus today, because today it actually IS raining. I'm sort of afraid to go outside in it. The photograph above is from my balcony.

The water here is very dirty, and I'm sure rain water is no different. All tap water has a sort of yellowish tint to it, and it smells very metallic. A mixture of iron or nickel or something, I'm not exactly sure. It's very strange though, because you can smell it in the tea in restaurants and stuff.

Keep in mind, I'm in Shanghai. The largest port city in the world. As far as the environment, sewage, and sanitation, it is important to remember that despite it's ever-growing position of power on a global scale, China is still a developing country. We experienced our industrial revolution 150 years ago, they're experiencing it now. So I'm not exactly shocked by the overall dirtiness here, just, well, unprepared? I'm not sure how else to describe it.

ni hao from china!

I made it to Shanghai safe and sound, despite my initial mishaps at the airport. My flight from Vancouver to China didn't seem as long as it really was (nearly 13 hours), probably because I was asleep most of the time. I managed to watch two movies, which was pretty awesome and they had a huge selection to choose from. Foreign carriers are so much better than any American airline out there, if you ask me. Everyone got their own touch screen video monitor and there were about 25 movies, 30 or so different TV shows, a bunch of video games, and an endless selection of music to choose from. Go Air Canada!

The food was very strange, sort of a mixture of Chinese and American food, but they had these cute mini-soy sauces that were in plastic fish containers. I don't know why anyone would want soy sauce for mashed potatoes, but when in Rome, I guess. We got two meals and then right before we landed everyone got a Cup O' Noodles which made me laugh. It seems a little dangerous to serve soup right before landing, doesn't it?

I'm still jet-lagged and have been waking up at 5AM every morning. I wouldn't mind if that side effect of jet-lagginess continued because I've been getting a ton of stuff done in the mornings when everyone else is sleeping.

Overall, China is nothing like what I was expecting. People tell you all these things about a country before you go, and then when you actually get there it seems like everything is different than what you've heard. There are pretty much NO white people here, which is totally fine by me because I want (and need) to make Chinese friends, but I was told there was a huge ex-pat population in Shanghai, specifically in the area of town where I am living (Pudong).

Me and some friends took the metro last night and we were the only white people in a sea of Asians. I tend to stand out because of my hair, which is a good and bad thing. Good because people always come up to me and want to talk, bad because people always come up to me and want to talk. It's a double-edged sword. Maybe in a few days when I'm not so tired all the time I'll feel more comfortable experimenting with my Chinese, but at this point I don't even remember any of the 2 months of instruction I had and have been surviving off of "ni hao" and "xie xie" and a lot of pointing to things.

china update

Okay, so my header has proclaimed that this blog is the "mis-adventures of a redhead in China" for over two months, yet all I ever seem to talk about is my dog and baking cupcakes. So, I thought a China update was long overdue.

Currently, I am NOT in China. I'm still in good ol' California. I had two months of summer school to prep me for the coursework I'll be teaching and studying while abroad and then a three week break before my departure to the land of Mao. I have about six days left in the states, my plane takes off from SFO on Sunday August 24th.

For those of you who don't memorize every bit of information I put on this blog (oh, for shame!), I'm a graduate student working towards a Master of Arts in International Studies with a concentration on International Education. Part of the program includes taking part in an internship, for me that internship is a teaching position with an international high school. I will be teaching some type of humanities coursework (won't find out exactly what until I get to China) and it will be in English. I also have to complete a research project as part of my master's thesis while I'm in China.

I will be living in the Pudong area of Shanghai, which is on the east coast of China. The high school where I will be teaching is a boarding school so I will be living on campus with other teachers as well as students. Pudong has a big ex-pat population so I won't feel completely lost and alone, thankfully. Just to give you an idea of how HUGE China is, Shanghai alone has a population of over 20 million people and it is also the largest port in the world.

I know approximately four sentences in Mandarin, including "Hello, my name is ____", "Thank you", "My stomach hurts", and woah...guess I only know three sentences. I did take five weeks of Mandarin language courses, so I have a very basic knowledge of the language and know a handful of words and characters, but I plan on doing most of my language learning overseas.

I'm very anxious about the big move. I've had butterflies in my stomach for the past week just thinking about it, and nearly had a panic attack when I started to pack up all of my clothes. I'm flying over there with two other friends from school which I am SOOOO happy about because I think I would freak out if I landed in the Shanghai airport all alone and had to navigate around China after a 16 hour flight by myself.

do they sell cupcakes on the great wall?

I've been pretty vague about my post-graduation plans recently, but I can't hold it in any longer! I'm going to CHINA! It seems random and out there, but one thing you should know about me is that I jump at pretty much any opportunity to travel, especially if it's to a place I haven't seen before. Mostly, though, I just really love fortune cookies. And sticky rice, mmmh.

The whole I'm-going-to-move-to-China thing happened in a very serendipitous way. I went to a career fair on campus a few months ago, and after wandering around aimlessly for over an hour BF finally asked me if I was ready to go. There weren't any jobs I was super interested in (mostly sales, yuck), but I figured I should walk around for a bit more since I bought a $200 suit for the event. Sidenote, screw professional clothing for being so expensive, I might as well wear a friggin' formal gown to work for that price. Well, right when we were leaving I caught a glance of a poster out of the corner of my eye advertising a graduate school program in China. Perfect, right? So I talked to the woman for a few minutes, got some information on the school and the internship in China, then left feeling like my two hundred bucks had been well spent.

Ever since I found out about the program (by chance, I might add), my life has been throwing me signs about China left and right. I know the Olympics are in Beijing this year so the Chinese government is really trying to hype tourism in China, but that still does not explain all the strange coincidences that have been occurring. First, a few days following the career fair I was at the gym and I put the TV on the travel channel and Anthony Bourdain was in Hong Kong. I never watch the travel channel at the gym...but for some reason I was drawn to it that day. Then, on the plane ride to Utah in April the cover article for the United Airlines magazine was on Shanghai. I always fall right asleep on planes (thank you, Xanax) but for some reason I stayed up and had forgotten a book, so I was forced to read the provided reading material. Then, when I went to Maryland my ticket sleeve had an advertisement for non-stop flights to Beijing and Shanghai (none of my three travel partners had the same advertisement, their ticket sleeves just showed a picture of a plane). And who did I sit next to on the flight? A Chinese guy! He was literally writing in his journal in Chinese script. So weird.

As far as details on the program, I will be receiving a Master of Arts in International Studies with a concentration in International Education. School begins on the American campus this summer, where I will be taking research classes as well as Chinese language courses (I do not know any Chinese, yet). I leave for a city in China sometime in August--I find out exactly where May 15th--then I will be teaching English starting in September. In addition to teaching English, I will be taking on-line courses through the university here in California and working on my thesis. The internship is a year long, so I will be back in September 2009 just in time to attend my cousin's wedding!

Oh, and look what I found at Cost Plus World Market the other day:



A Chinese take-out dog bowl and fortune cookie chew toy! It took all the will power in the world not to buy it then and there, but my dog already has a bowl and a whole drawer of chew toys and I need to be saving for my trip. Is it horrible that the person I'm going to miss the most while I'm in China is my dog?