It's been a few days since I've written anything; I've been traveling and doing schoolwork. I think I'm going to break this into two entries, because I had some things to put down even before we went west to Henan Province to see the Shaolin Temple and Longmen Grottos.

Last Thursday was the first day of classes, which will be MWF: 9-11am for the Uncovering Shanghai culture course (at the CIEE study center) followed by 1-4pm for Mandarin Chinese on campus at East China Normal University ("Normal" is the English translation for "teaching university"). Tuesday and Thursday we meet in the afternoon for the language class. The campus is really nice, with lots of trees, grass (and quiet!) aligning two central streams. Chinese classes are taught by future "chinese-as-a-second-langauge" teachers...I believe they are graduate students. All of the teachers are young chinese women, and are really nice and fun to talk with. My class was juggling a few of the teachers around for the first three days of class, but finally we have our permanent teachers assigned and I think they will be alot of fun for the next seven weeks. The teacher for my dictation section is Dong laoshi, and the smaller section is taught by Chang laoshi-laoshi refers to their status as teachers. The language class will supposedly be "no english" within the next week, which seems a little overwhelming so soon, but after a week in the homestay I'm getting better at understanding what is being said.

Last Thursday we went on a cruise of The Bund, which is the area directly across the Haungpu River from Pudong. Right before we got on the buses to get down there, we had to wait out a Shanghai thunderstorm, which was very impressive. At about dusk the wind kicked up to 35 mph, and the sky got almost black. Water came down in sheets for about 20 minutes, and I was lucky enough to be watching from my chinese tutor's dorm window. Waiting in the lobby later, we met some students from Washington DC who are living on the ECNU campus studying Chinese culture/history. The drive through Shanghai was pretty stunning, with huge lightning bolts streaking across the sky and lighting up most of the city. For dinner we took a break from Chinese food: Pizza Hut. Traffic didn't stop when we got on the water; we were in an antpile of barges and other random boats. A lot of the boats seemed to barely be making it, the engines were sputtering and their crews were huddled in tents on deck trying to get up/downriver. The city was lit up, and actually kind of looked like Vegas at night...all of the tall buildlings have pretty well designed lighting, and some were almost completely covered in neon.

I've posted some pictures, go to http://students.washington.edu/mkuffel/Shanghai.

Lastly, I cannot see comments that are written on blogspot.com, as apparently the Chinese Government has blocked the website (whatever the reason, blogspot.com doesn't load in China). I can edit, but just cannot see the published blog for myself.

Today was the last "free" day of touring Shanghai. The Program set it up as a scavenger hunt, giving points for visiting certain locations and seeing certain Shanghai novelties. This was a really good way to get us to use the subway system and bus system (and our feet). One guy on our team has a brother living in Shanghai (starting a retail business manufacturing retail in China) so we stopped by his office in the morning. It turned out to help alot, he scribbled out a map of the subway system for us and marked most of the targets on our hunt. It was fun, but we lost energy about 2pm when we stopped in a park to eat a watermelon that we had bought from a street vendor. This park (People's Square) was actually the most impressive site, sitting right in the middle of urban Shanghai with trees, grass, ponds, etc with really good views of the skyline.

Tomorrow classes start and I'm really excited to start intensely studying the language, now that I have all of my time to devote to it. The campus entrance is about 200 feet from my host-family's apartment, which will be really nice since classdays will end on campus and I can just walk home. I went around the campus alittle bit today with some guys who were going to play tennis and run- really just looking to meet some Chinese and practice talking. Also, every Thursday is "english corner" at the college, where people from Shanghai come to campus (and meet under the huge statue of Mao) the practice their english skills on Americans/English speakers who are in the city. Alot of people from the program are planning on doing it, looking at the possibility of meeting (female) language partners to tutor in English and to be tutored in Chinese. Should be interesting...

I also learned how to really cross the street today, and thought I was going to be killed. On the way to campus with Alec and Jeff we decided to be bold and cross the street without using the crosswalk (well, bold in the sense that we just followed an old chinese guy as he crossed). The street was six lanes wide, and we got stuck standing on the center line with cars passing on each side for about 30 seconds. Normally you'd think cars would give you space, but they are too concerned about where they are going and how slow the other cars are moving than the people standing in the middle of the road. We darted across the last three lanes (behind our chinese friend) to get to safety. He laughed, probably thinking about how timid Americans are. Just another day for him, but it was exciting for us. We'll se if we ever try that again.

Well I have been thrown in the middle of Shanghai's ridiculous traffic/transportation system, as my homestay is about 3 miles from the community college where the "content/cultural course" will take place on Mon/Wed/Fri. The community college is in the same complex as the program center and student apartments (where everyone else lives). Sunli (my homestay dad) showed me the bus stops that will take me to the college on Sunday afternoon, which at first made me wonder if he was just going to throw me to the wolves and say "here's your bus, good luck." But he quickly reassured me that the other homestay students would be joining me on the first trip. On monday morning I went next door to meet another student (Walid-from somewhere in Jordan) to get on the bus. His homestay dad went along with us and so did another student's homestay mom.

I thought I knew what a crowded bus looked like. There was enough people on our bus to fill one of King County Metro's accordian buses with the aisle filled, but this bus was only about forty feet long. We literally had to pull our way into the back door using the railings, and the back door pushed us in a little further further when it closed behind us. Standing in the exit isn't ideal, especially when the bus stops at the Zhongshan Park station and 75% of the people want off to transfer to the lightrail.

After getting to our building we had a few hours of orientation and then explored the surrounding area. The orientiation was pretty typical, what to do and what not to do...but our Cultural Studies professor mentioned something that made most of us think a little bit- he said he was recently in New York City and felt like it was a little too slow paced and the streets weren't very crowded. When we explored the surrounding neighborhood we got a sense of what he meant. I haven't seen The Bund or the Pudong Financial Zone yet (the cosmopolitan and downtown areas of Shanghai, respectively), but after our exploration yesterday I am interested to see how much busier and erratic a place can possibly be.

I'm in China, and I don't know where to begin with this. I feel like I have already seen so much just by coming from the airport to the program office and checking in. Since leaving Vancouver, there has been three 'events' that I will likely always remember as marking the beginning of this trip:

1. The first was during the flight; about four hours away from Shanghai the ground became visible for a little while. It wasn't really "ground", but some islands somewhere off the coast of Siberia or China. Normally during flights I look out and visualize the airplane in relation to a map of the U.S. and figure out which part of which state I am looking at and what type of people live there. But seeing these islands and not even knowing what country I was looking at let alone who lived there made me realize how far away I was going to be, and how many new things I was going to see. And looking back after just 12 hours in China I still probably don't have any idea how much I'm going to see.

2. Next was a series of events proceeding from the plane landing at Shanghai Pudong Intl to the bus ride from the airport to the area of the city that I will be living in for the eight weeks.

• Descending into the city, I had awoken to realize that I could just make out the curvature of the earth, and decided I was going to try to get it on my camera. This was my first experience with the smog surrounding the city. By the time I was ready with my camera, we were just about level with the floor of clouds we had been above during the flight. I focused on the vewfinder of the camera and took a a picture, but we entered the clouds immediately afterward. I put my camera down, to see that these really weren't clouds, but brown smog. The ground wasn't visible until we were below about 5,000 feet.
• Exiting the plane was like walking into the bathroom after someone has taken a long, hot shower. You seem to take shorter breaths because the humidity is so high. I figured that this was just the jetway, which wasn't air conditioned, but entering the airport was hardly any better. They do have some air conditioning going on, but it only cools the air without any dehumidification.
• After getting our bags (which were sitting in the corner because our flight had apparentely already had its turn on its carousel), we walked through the customs gate unchallenged (unlike the passport/visa checkpoint, which took about an hour). This was the first time of the trip that I'd had my camera ready. We entered a winding mass of people looking for their groups. Their groups were looking for them also; our herd of people was lined with people shoulder-to-shoulder holding all sorts of signs, yelling for their passengers. It felt like the paparazzi- hundreds of people looking at each exiting passenger to make sure their signs were read. Somehow I spotted our sign (a piece of notebook paper with "ciee" scribbled in red marker) and we met our two chaperones.
• The last part was the busride into the city (not quite as cool as a trip on the 200mph maglev train would have been). Every few minutes a new skyline appeared out of the smog, with skyskrapers and tower cranes literally as far as you could see. Giant billboards bridged across the highway, advertising cars and other products made by companies we had heard of before, and many we had not. Tiny cars, huge buses, and everything inbetween bolted across lanes of the road (apparently you can do anything you want as long as you honk first). Off the highway, bikes and pedestrians filled the streets, most were carrying armloads of bags and other miscellaneous crap.

3. Meeting my host family has made me even more excited about the upcoming eight weeks. Huang Ming, my host mom, grabbed me immediately after I stepped off the bus, showed me an envelope with my name on it and gave me a hug and said 'Ni Hao'. She must have had a picture of me, as she knew who I was before I had even seen her. She speaks no english, and got her husband, Sun Li, to take one of my bags to their car. Sun has limited english skills, and we were able to communicate enough in english to show me to the house, give me a tour, feed me dumplings and let me shower. They have a nice apartment; very clean with darkly-stained hardwood floors and nice furniture...no air conditioning.

I will be on my own during the day as they both work (Sun is a professor and Huang works for the government), meaning I have to ride the bus the classes at the off campus program center, and walk a few blocks to the University for classes. Luckily I will be accompanied by another student from the program the first day, his host family lives in the same apartment complex.

Time for bed, it's 4 am local time. It will take a couple days to move my daily routine ahead 15 hours. I'll add some photos soon.