Week 2

I'm still trying to get used to blogging semi-regularly, and all anyone really wants is to see pictures, so... photo post it is! Apologies for the repeats, Instagram friends.

This week I spent a lot of time studying Chinese with Cassie again. I think I'm sorta getting the hang of it, but it comes in and out. Cassie can say one thing to me and I get it and respond right away, and five minutes later she could ask the same question and I'd stare at her blankly. But we took some field trips this week, which made it a lot more fun and helped some vocabulary actually stick in my brain.

This is the living room in our apartment, where I frequently study or think about studying in the mornings.

Cassie took me to a mall to review my store, clothing, and shopping vocabulary, which is pretty extensive for two weeks of lessons. Do you know the Chinese words for leggings and short boots? I DO! It included a stop in a cosmetics store so Cassie could get makeup to match mine, and I spotted this product on the shelves. As much as I don't blend in here, there's something kinda nice about living somewhere where tanning and bronzer is not such a strong part of the beauty equation. Cassie also got me a milk tea, which she says is a trendy drink for cool young people so clearly I need to know about it. It's tasty!

Wednesday we had a holiday farewell with Duncan (second from the right), whose flight was leaving early in the morning. We had delicious food at Din Tian Fung, and I was late because I was dropped off alone at an intersection and wandered around lost for a good half hour. Then we met up at a bar run by people in our social circle for some fun. It was a tiny bar the size of a living room and it was all people we knew, so it was quite cozy. Below is just some our delicious dinner spread.

Another field trip! Cassie took me to one of her favorite cheap food stands for some Chinese pancakes. They're made fresh on basically a crepe maker, with an egg added in the mix, and then topped with fried chicken, some crisps, lettuce, sauce, and then folded up and tossed in a paper wrapper. So good! Later that night Scott and I tried a French restaurant that's right next to our apartment complex. Nova. It was really tasty, and the waiter gave us both HUGE glasses of Orangina with twisty straws. And we split a mini cheese plate for dessert and I was inspired to give a whole speech about how much I always love warm fresh bread and the combination of a delicious cheese and a crisp slice of apple.

Scott finally convinced me to join him for my first massage in China. Here I am looking about as closed-off and anxious as possible while we wait in the room for our masseuses. It was... a bit rough, I'm not gonna lie. I wasn't sore when I showed up, but I was sore for a few days afterwards. But I think my circulation is better? Our masseuses were incredibly nice and friendly and Scott chattered away with them in Chinese and a little bit of English while I stayed more focused on tensely preparing myself for some bone-deep tissue massage. I did manage to follow some of the conversation, though, which I was proud of. They thought I was thin and beautiful and looked like a French movie star, so that is a victory both for my Chinese skills and for awkward blue paper massage shorts.

Another adventure with Cassie! We went to the very popular West Nanjing pedestrian shopping street. It's a very long street and there are no cars allowed so some people use these little trains.

Here I am posing with the sign for the street. If I look slightly uncomfortable, it's because the surrounding crowd stopped to watch me get my picture taken. I do get watched a lot. I was in a store looking at a shirt when Cassie pointed out two girls who were frozen in the middle of the aisle, staring with mouths agape as if I were performing a magic show. I'm a weirdo!

This is a random statue in the pedestrian street. Tons of people were posing with it, so why not?

SWFC! Shanghai World Financial Center, one of the most recognizable buildings in Shanghai, and also where I have my tutoring sessions.

Friday we went out for a Szechuan dinner with some of Scott's colleagues. I hadn't had it before, so it was a new experience for me. And my first experience with ma, the flavor that makes you go all numb. It was... pretty spicy, but the numb stuff wasn't as much of a challenge as I thought it'd be. I have a fairly low threshold for spicy, but the numb was really just tingly. Kinda fun, actually. We had the waitress help us choose desserts, though, which proved to be an adventure. One looked like a pork bun only it was filled with like twinkie cream, and the other was a complete mystery to me with gummies and grass jellies and lotus seeds in a goop. Not delicious but not terrible, but a little bit difficult to deal with psychologically.

Saturday was the Christmas party at Peter and Miranda's. They cooked a delicious spread and I ate way too many cookies followed by some delicious chocolate pie. And Santa stopped by with his parachute.

It got pretty silly. And Scott spent some adorable quality time with Peter and Miranda's tiny baby boy in his cute elf costume, and five minutes after this the baby was napping in Scott's arms. And Peter got to hold Murray on his lap for a bit, too. It was a fun night!

Brunchapalooza

I love brunch. I really do. So when I heard that brunches were really popular here, I was on board. But I had no idea what I was getting into.

Brunch here is an event. It is an all-day marathon of every food and drink you can imagine. It is a feast, it is a festival, it is a celebration of gluttony. And man, did we celebrate.

We went to the Westin, a beautiful hotel with a huge open lobby/atrium with two floors of food. Let me say that again. Two whole floors of food. There was a giant dessert station, a breakfast station, meat stations, Indian food, Chinese food, Greek food, Thai food, Mexican food, Japanese food, French food, a noodle station, a little Italy, a seafood bar, you name it.

With Peter at brunch. Yes, there was cotton candy, or as the Brits call it, "fairy floss."

Round 2 or 3.

So the other thing about brunch is that it always comes with some live entertainment. After a meal spent listening to a live orchestra followed by some opera hits, these three ladies came out playing their electric violins and cello.

A group of women danced with fans.

This was my favorite performer. A magician with a thousand faces, he was silently playful, charming, and a trickster. Up close it was still impossible to see how he changed masks over and over and over again as he danced around waving his cape and toyed with us until his last mask was unveiled and he took a bow. Loved it.

Week 1 in Review

Here's a quick rundown of my week:

Sunday we lounged about a little bit and wandered around a giant store picking up random snacks (salted dried peaches. Do not recommend.) Then went to a pub to meet up with some of Scott's friends. I was feeling fine the first twenty minutes we were there and then felt punched in the face by jet lag, but I did a good impression of a living person. Then to keep me awake we went out to dinner, and went to the popular Indian restaurant across the street from our apartment. It was delicious. Then we stopped off at one of two DVD stores on our block. DVDs are so much cheaper than theater tickets, and they release them right away. I jet lag crashed right away. Sleepyhead!

My week has been pretty much: wake up, lounge about a bit, head out to meet with my Chinese tutor, study study study, dinner/hangouts with Scott. Four hours a day of intensive one-on-one tutoring has turned out to be a pretty good, if exhausting, crash course. And I've become very familiar with the various hot chocolates offered at the Starbucks across from Jin Mao Tower. Jin Mao is where Scott works, and it's located in Pudong,a newer neighborhood across the river with lots of large business buildings. A lot of ex-pats live there. It's more spread out, less pedestrian-friendly and less charming, which is why we call it PuJersey. We live in Puxi, which is like Manhattan. It's about 10-20 minutes to Scott's work by taxi, which sounds nuts to do but it only costs about $3.

The iconic Jin Mao.

My awesome tutor, Cassie. She's been teaching me Chinese, but we have also been having lots of interesting conversations (sorta in Chinese) about fashion, pretty celebrities, people watching, slang, and cultural differences. And I know all about the Shanghai gay community now, which is fascinating.

Thursday I had my first run-in with a crazy person. Let me preface this by saying that I had been prepared for some odd interactions with strangers. I heard that it would be somewhat commonplace for people to ask to take my picture or to talk to me. I had already experienced plenty of blatant staring, and have constant conversations about a) how pretty I am, b) how big my eyes are, c) how pale I am, d)how I look French(?), e) how interesting/nice my hair is (color, curliness, or it being short). And Scott always has good stories about meeting strangers and making friends. So for the sake of wanting to be respectful and polite in an unfamiliar setting, I had lowered the begoneforeverallstrangers vibe I had somewhat perfected in NY. And all of that is the background explanation for why when some dude on the subway introduced himself to me and told me I looked like Cinderella, I said "OK, thank you," instead of shooting laser beams from my eyeballs. But then he kept talking to me, and he followed me off the train and I got very uncomfortable and eventually faked a phone call from Scott to try to shake him. And every time I tried to get rid of him, he'd hug on me and kiss my hand. Horrifying. Somehow I got him to go away, though why I was still trying to be polite I'll never know. How often do people find themselves in a position where they're torn between being polite and being comfortable, and they choose to be polite? It really shook me. I've had to adjust my boundaries and expectations a little living here, but clearly I needed to define for myself what my new boundaries are. So I've since done that, and they will be strictly enforced. With krav maga.

Scott's coworker, Leslie, went to India and made friends with a man working at a restaurant. He has since moved to Shanghai and is working at a very fancy Indian restaurant, the first Indian restaurant ever to open in Shanghai (opened about 20 years ago--there are now quite a few). So we went there to celebrate Leslie's promotion. It was delicious, it was expensive, and it ended with some sort of dessert battle (pictured above).

Saturday, we went to a company party at the Roosevelt Hotel on the Bund. It was a lovely location, with about 100 or so participants mingling and having drinks and enjoying the buffet. It was nice, if a bit quiet. I'm used to a much more laidback office party atmosphere. We sat by a window to enjoy the famously picturesque Bund, and I snapped this shot of a ship passing in front of the Pearl Tower. Nice! Then Scott dropped me off at home and went out to join 35 other ex-pat gentlemen who were bar hopping in Santa suits.

Jet Lag Brawl

The plan for my first night in Shanghai was insane. After a 14-hour flight, immediately getting dressed up in black tie attire and socializing with strangers for nine straight hours is pretty much the exact opposite of a good idea. But somehow it worked out. And what better introduction to Shanghai than the Brawl on the Bund? It was a wild night of white collar boxing, a charity event where professional business people train and compete in boxing matches in support of the Foundation for Newborns with Respiratory Failure. It was red carpet, tons of ex-pats in gowns and tuxes, interesting signature cocktails, a delicious four-course meal, and, of course, quality boxing entertainment. Just rowdy enough for me to stay wide awake and cheer for my favorite competitors, though I think the boxer who chose the Baywatch theme song as his entrance music was the crowd favorite. And the crowd definitely got sillier and sillier as the night progressed.

Did I mention Scott still had his hideous Movember mustache?

We hung out after the event was over and chatted with the other people at our table, all Scott's friends from work and his darts league and their spouses, and then we headed over to the after party, hosted by one of the event sponsors. It was located in the very picturesque Bund, in a club that plays a wide range of music from the 50s-00s. We went right in, because the security guards for celebrity and upscale events are all in our social circle now. After spending some time pretending to be a regular person and have introductory conversations with people, I got pulled to the dance floor and dropped all pretense of being a serious adult. My continuing disregard for jet lag earned me a lot of admiration from Scott's friends, but it was my ridiculously over-the-top one-woman hoe-down rendition of Cotton Eye Joe that got me the official seal of approval. People are charmed by my weirdness? This is a good sign. And the dance floor is where I stayed, having a blast until Scott told me it was 3am and I should probably get some sleep at some point.

If you want to see some pictures, here's the photo gallery

Trailblazer

I really wanted to write an amazing first blog post. I imagined typing a long, beautiful entry with some truly thoughtful first impressions, acknowledging all of my heartfelt feelings about leaving New York while at the same time expressing my enthusiasm about what's to come here in this next phase. It was going to be intelligent, insightful, and eloquent. Poetry in blog form. A minimum of two tissues required. And I wanted people to read it and think, wow, I am definitely adding this blog to my regular rotation instead of just reading the first post out of obligation before forgetting about it forever.

But that is a lot of pressure for one little post, so like any experienced procrastinator, I avoided it. And I excused myself for being too busy and jet lagged, or I assumed that one morning I would sit down at a desk with a quill and ink in my hands, ponder intensely for a few moments, then shout "By Jove, I've got it!" (because obviously that's how every brilliant idea or discovery happens). But I'm not a genius, and I left my ink and quill at home. The brilliant eureka moment is not going to come, and waiting forever is the only way to guarantee failure. And that's just silly. So I've decided to skip all that mess.

I don't know what I want to say. I don't know if, when, or how often inspiration will strike. But in the spirit of adventure and a solid "up yours" to that inner voice that thinks I'm always making of a fool of myself and that I need to be good at things, I'm not going to let that stop me. There are going to be some uninspired posts on this blog. Hey, some may even be downright unreadable. But what's important is that they will be there. And I will be here, in a foreign country, bumbling around and failing over and over again and writing about it with varying success. Maybe I'll figure it out, and maybe I won't, but either way I'm going to keep trying. For everyone who ever let fear of failure stop them from trying. For you. You're welcome.