June 4

Dear God, what did I get myself into?

First day of class. For one, I was up at 6:30 am, which is earlier than I’ve been up in a long time. Breakfast was decent. We all met in the lobby at 7:30, to walk to class. Our teacher came in, and started teaching us Chinese. We worked on numbers, and a few words. He wrote out the Chinese characters instead of the phonetic spellings, and threw us for one, because I really don’t think the characters are something we’re going to be able to pick up on. It also didn’t help that he NEVER SPOKE ENGLISH. I assumed he must know it, but he would never use it (just the occasional “very good”). So great, complete immersion. Kill me now. But then, about halfway through, that teacher left, and another one came in, and this one spoke English, and we went over the sounds of the Chinese language. This is going to be so difficult. I feel like I learned something, but not very much, and I’m not sure I’ll remember it. But oh well.

Lunch is in the school cafeteria, and our tour directors and guide were there to give us our lunch cards and show us how the cafeteria worked (a simple concept, but in a non-english speaking arena, even the simplest tasks seem overwhelming). The food wasn’t too bad, there were some green beans I liked, and I can always eat rice. I won’t starve, but I won’t necessarily look forward to the meal.

Then a few of us who are taking the Hong Kong excursion needed to go acquire new visas (Hong Kong isn’t part of mainland China, so we would need another entry visa to return). We went to the Shanghai Immigration Bureau, waited an hour with our application forms and passport pictures, only to learn that we needed a security form from our hotel (showing where we’re staying) so we will have to return tomorrow with the correct paperwork, and wait again. It will then take 5 days to process, but we don’t leave til the 15th so it should be fine.

While in the downtown area, we got dropped off at the Pearl Tower, because there’s a huge mall next door. It had some fun stores, like H&M, but while they have cute fun clothes that aren’t ridiculously expensive, I would really rather buy stuff here that I can’t get somewhere else. Also, I was hoping more for things in the $5-$10 range, instead of the $20-$30 range. My bank account is dwindling rather fast.

Back to the hotel, then met downstairs to go find dinner. We were considering Korean, but the weather was drizzly, and so we stopped in at a closer place that one of our student guides said had Western food. They did have some Western food, and I splurged for a steak (notice I pick food over clothing). The rest of the group stuck with more Chinese fare, some noodle bowls and hot pot, fried rice, etc. My steak was excellent though, with some weird pureed soup that wasn’t too bad, garlic bread that was a bit spicy, and a Sprite. I also for some reason got like, a shot of wine at the beginning, the waitress just brought me this little sip of wine. It was nice whatever it was. We got stuffed (again, ordered more food than necessary) and walked back to the hotel. Washed some clothes in the bathtub, will probably work out after our stomachs settle. Tomorrow, we have a nice new classroom in this tower of a building. And we’ll try the visa thing again.