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.