Day 4 - Nanjing Xi Lu and the Bund

The bund, it was absolutely beautiful!!

although the day started out rather crappy with my alarm clock not working at and stopped at 6am. So min and I kept thinking it was 6 am and refused to wake up. The lady at the place we stayed at had to knock on our door to let us know and we thought they were knocking at the wrong door at such an early time.

When she finally used the key to open the door, she told us it was because the school called to figure out what has happened to us. We then asked them what time it was and they told us it was 10am. We were like oh shit and got out of the door at lightning speed.

We felt so bad because the teacher, helen, had been waiting for us all morning since 9am. So we want to take her out to lunch one day.

We went to yoshinoya for lunch and it was also quite cheap compared to HK. The one here is more of a fast food type store. A meal was about 30 RMB with a rice dish and as fruit cup.

Anywho, i'm looking forward to tomorrow and a quiet night tonight so just going to watch some of the shows that i've been d/ling and catch up! :D

;) also got someone to talk to now...:D hehe

Day 3: Shanghai - WE Moved!!! June 24, 08

moved into skiiline hotel which is right beside the school, super convenient and free internet! woot~~

Lunch was KFC today which i haven't had for like forever... because they have a very chinese-sized menu here. I had a peking duck like chicken wrap and papaya egg tart. The wrap was great and the meal was only 20 bucks
(11:36pm)

After classes ended at 3 today, Min and I decided to go home and enjoy the internet for a bit and take a break. Then we headed out at about 5ish to hit up some of the shopping areas in the Jing An area. We visited the jiou gong bai ke (city mall), the 66 plaza, the shanghai center and also the west gate mall. not to mention shopping along nanjing xi lu. The shopping centers have upscale shops but things arent too too cheap. I managed to still spend about 1725 on 8 piece of clothing.... I decided to stupidly pay in cash because i didn't want to carry the money around... but what i really should've done is to put it on credit card.. oiy... i'm such an idiot... i really just have to watch what i spend from now on and not buy as much. I still have ye to find postcards... and a way to mail them... i guess that will come as we visit more places...

going to catch up on my shows through streaming now... i'll write more tomorrow~

Day 2 in Shanghai: June 23, 2008

Monday June 23, 11:41pm

It’s been a long day today, definitely one of the longest I’ve had in a while.

I started the day at about 5am when my body decides to give in to jet lag and would not let me fall asleep again. Since Min and I slept on the couches in the living area, I didn’t want to disturb her too much with too much movements. So instead I went and read my shanghai guidebook and played a bit of Pheonix Wright. At about 8-9am took a shower, went down for breakfast and then headed over to school.

David from Red carpet mandarin sat down with us with a teacher and went through what we wanted to achieve in the course. At our meeting, we established how we wanted to take the course, chose course textbooks and determined course focus. We had to read a passage and it seemed that we’ll also need to work on our pinyin since we both have our own “accents”.

Our business teacher was a girl named Helen who studied international business in Scotland. She was pretty cool and very nice. We learned a bit about org structure in Chinese, the terms and such and then learned about office supplies. I think tomorrow we’ll go right into a Business in China case study book which looked extremely interesting. This will definitely be a great learning experience especially if it ever comes up for work in the future. They were also very eager in incorporating importing and exporting things into our course but we think that might be a bit too much. I wouldn’t mind learning about how to do business here though, but we’ll see what we can cover in such a short period of time.

We had lunch at the cheapest Italian restaurant in town. A set lunch, a pasta of some sort plus a salad and a soup cost only 15 RMB which is about 2-3 dollars Canadian. The food was alright but filling. Min then really needed her coffee so we stumbled upon a posh little joint that is apparently Taiwanese on the 4^th floor of a building.

We also got a bit of opportunity to see the city better and took a better look at jing an temple. I still cant believe such a landmark have a shopping center on its ground floor. Our afternoon teacher’s last name is xu and she also thinks that I have extreme problems with sheng diao (tones). I will need to basically memorize in order to improve.. and she says practice is key. So hopefully I’ll practice enough in the next 3 weeks to be understandable… not even aiming for the standard :P

It then started pouring at about 4pm just when we were about to get off class. Min and I were both not very happy with it as we were wearing sandals. Note to self, just wear rain boots for no reason or have them with me. At least I had my umbrella.

WE also went to check out another place that we’re hoping to move to. IF all goes well we should be able to get our money back from here and move in tomorrow. I’m excited already.. because we’ll actually have internet included this time and the place is much closer to the school (2 minutes walk) vs. ??? walk.

Min and I still need to plan out what we want to do in shanghai and whether or not we want to take day trips to Suzhou and hang zhou. I think those are musts, it’s just a matter of when. I should probably end this post now and pack to be ready for moving tomorrow and some awesome shopping ;)

HKG -> PVG June 22, 2008

Sunday June 22, 11:30 pm

Arrival in Shanghai

The trip to Shanghai was surprisingly eventful. We headed out from Kowloon city after I went to get some last minute essentials from the 10-dollar store (equivalent of a dollar store in the N.A. but a touch more expensive since exchange rate is about 1 HKD :7.66 CAD). There was this really cool game at Terminal Two with a ghost and some wand thing at the arcade. After some explorations of the Hong Kong International airport, I went to the departure area in Terminal 2 (where there was absolutely no line-up) and through to my gate.

Flying China Eastern Airline was a new experience for me (and apparently for many). This is one of the less common carriers in Hong kong and much more popular in the mainlands. (It was cheap! *shrug* I’m sure it was going to be better than ryan last year, at least I get an assigned seat. While checking in, the counter guy already informed me that the plane was going to be delayed for 10 minutes. The good news was he was very lenient with my overweight baggage.

I had a quick dinner inside and time to spare waiting at the gate (which changed last minute). Surprisingly, the plane was pretty big, with 6 across in a 2-4-2 configuration. I got seat number 3 so it was an aisle one. The only problem with that seat was the chair was broken so it doesn’t stay in the upright position if you lean on it. There were multiple times when people used the back of my seat as anchor point and it got really frustrating for me when I’m caught by surprise.

The flight was an hour and a half long and I totally didn’t expect them to serve us dinner. It was either noodles (looked like the shanghai fried ones) or a spicy meat rice dish (which I got stuck with and didn’t touch because of the spice and to avoid upsetting my stomach). It was served with fruits – a piece of dragon fruit, a piece of watermelon and 2 pieces of cantaloupe. Some salad that didn’t look TOO appetizing.. and a small water thing. They also served warm dinner roll and haagan-daaz ice cream afterwards.

The highlight of the flight came when the steward walked around with immigration cards to china. I wasn’t sure if I was considered foreign and my curiosity spoke out so I grabbed one. As seen in the picture, I lost control of myself and bursted out laughing when I folded across the guided line and read the disclaimer on the back. As you noticed, apparently foreigners are not called foreigners in china, they are worse, much worse and known as “Aliens”… Point number 3 deserves a notable mention as it states “Aliens shall not be employed in China without permission of the competent authorities of the Chinese Government”.. so yes I get that Aliens should not be employed.. but you mean there are incompetent authorities too? :p that’s just way too funny.

So luggage claim at Shanghai Pudong airport was also rather interesting. I was able to spot min and David from the mandarin school waiting outside for me, so I waved at them before heading over to the luggage belt. So after you pick up your luggage you’re then supposed to go through customs. Not only is there one custom scanning machine, a very wide line up way, and lots of people pushing and shoving… you have to stick your luggage onto the belt through the crowd and then pick it up on the other side.. Its not only inefficient but also very ineffective. I could’ve totally slipped through.

Because my flight was so late, we actually missed the opportunity to take the high lift onto the subway. Instead we had to take a taxi which ended up costing 219RMB and took about an hour. Where we’re living is kinda not close to a subway line and a bit far from our school. The good news is, we can sign up for how ever many days we want (right now we are signed up until Friday), so if things don’t work out we can move. It’s a loft style with a super tiny kitchen and super tiny bathroom (as seen in pictures) a 2 story high living area with a small tv, dining table with 4 chairs, a desk with internet that’s going to cost (20RMB a day on cable) and 2 bedrooms (one that looks awesome and 1 that looks sketched without ventilations.

So we’re considering to see if they have other rooms that we can look at and switch to… if not then we can move a bed down to the ground floor and sleep there. Otherwise we can also seriously consider moving out from here and to another place.

So far the trip is full of surprises and with the exception of some of the problems, I’m happy with the place we are living in since it could definitely be a lot worse. Morning class at nine tomorrow and apparently we’re expecting some visitors this week!! Woot! I’m excited already!

Day 1 and 2 in HK 6/19 - 6/21

Shopping to get ready for my SH trip!! omg!

YYZ -> HKG - June 19, 2008

pre-trip

Just finished packing for my Asia trip this year and thought i'd put in an entry before the trip...