Exploring the City and Culture

The first day in china included a chinese breakfast (which we can get every morning for FREE). Didnt know that rice is a breakfast food but it was still good. By the way, dont do what I have done with the chopsticks, it means you want to murder someone (I was told this after... oops). Which btw, I completely forgot about the whole utensils thing and should have brought my own! My meal takes twice as long to eat! But by the end of this I should be real good at using them.

We walked to the metro. Boy there are alot of people! The doors closed on some people. You gotta be quick and PUSH!!! No mercy just go! The first stop of the day included opening a chinese bank account. I think this means I am official! But opening this account for 13 people was not fun! You see... chinese dont really know what a line is. They like to skip. I got a dose of this on the airplane waiting for the bathroom. But after 3 hours of waiting and line skipping we were on our way to get a mobile phones. So I have a chinese number... anyone who wants to call me 15618080273 :). I am still pretty excited when I get a call or text! After going to the best buy for a phone we headed to sign our contracts for the summer. The center was so beautiful! It got me so excited to see everything! Cant wait to see the smart board in action! Our first day was over cause I came home and SLEPT and then woke up and then SLEPT and the woke up... schedule is off but at least I am sleeping now!

The second day was awesome. We went to the Bund. The Bund is a bunch of late 19th century colonial buildings on the west bank of the Huangpu River. In one of my books is says according to a local saying "all roads in Shanghai lead to the Bund." It was a rainy rainy morning, but yet their were alot of people at the Bund. We were stopped my three chinese young ladies. They wanted us to take a picture. Then they talked to us about where we were from. Their English was amazing they said they were from a university, and they were so sweet! They knew so many facts about where everyone was from. Then they invited us to a traditional tea ceremony at the Expo. We all wanted to go and felt bad for declining but we were waiting on another person to meet us. We went down and waited for our friend. While we were waiting, Lindsey (a summer worker from Cali) was looking at what we should see in the Bund. She then gasped and read out loud a section on scams. It basically just described what happened to us on the bund with the chinese girls.They would later try and have us rack up a high bill at the tea shop.... WOW we dodged a bullet! So not even 10 minutes later and we opened to read about the scam. God was watching over us that morning! :)
We decided to head over to the French Concession. Man was it beautiful! and I saw WHITE PEOPLE! lol! Alot of foreigners or expats live in this area. Mostly everything was written in English and Chinese. The streets are lined with trees and its actually very quiet from the other parts of the city. Its filled with shops and restaurants. This will be the first of many times we visit the french concession! This day was so exhausting... but it ended with an art show back in the french concession and a fabulous dinner at a hot pot restaurant. We ate and ate and ate! It was basically like a big pot and we cook a bunch of meats, veggies and tofu. Much to my surprise it was awesome! Yummy yummy... but some (NOT ME) felt the repercussions of this much later! lol!
Awesome few days in Shanghai!!! :) What a wonderful city!