new aquisition

[photo credit to Yigeren on flickr]

Not far down the street is this ruin. By this week they have probably managed to build up a wall to cover the rubble. They are tearing down the structures in order to build a park- tearing homes, shops, resturants. When we first moved here, there were shops and resturants at least. Now its rubble. And even as one man is breaking it down, another man is salvaging bricks that are still intact.

Besides all this, my roomate and myself just got bikes, to explore the area, and go work. The saying "it's like riding a bike" does not apply to me. I THOUGHT I knew how to ride a bike, then I'm panicing at the store (like walmart) because I can't balance at ALL. oh how embarassing! My roomie says, "I"m not sure if you should get it," but we live close to work, and the idea of biking thru the stagnant summer air seemed kinda nice. And i'd be getting exercise. Thats a big plus. So i bought a purple bike with hawaiian flowers on it, and we rode around the empty parking lot at work. It was tons harder than I ever remember when I was 6!!!! we biked the long way home avoiding all main streets with motor vehicles. I paniced everytime there was something in front of me (namely people, mailboxes, or both side by side)

We went home and I was exhausted. sore all the next day. Hopefully I'll get better soon, b/c they just changed the bus system so you have to have exact change, and its kinda annoying. Normally you get on the back door and pay the "cashier" type lady, but now its like muni. AND it was so crowded monday i almost got STUCK ON THE BUS.

Knights in shining armor.

The international club at work: Marc (france), Tucker(WA), Jeremiah(NY)

We are all industrial/product designers.

Marc has a habit of singing/whistling all the time. Tucker steps in the trash can and also regularly pulls his head phones out or tries not to and then his ipod goes flying. Jeremiah says, "mad [insert adjective/adverb here]" and "wicked"(cool) For example, "That car was going mad quick!" Me, I'm just the girl.

I've also learned that when marc says "elephant" its actually just "eleven" with a french accent, and that "make Pa-tee" means "let's party!"

a long overdue post: spring festival

This photo was taken at yuyuan garden a few weeks back when I went shopping with two girls from the office. It was right after holiday, but still considered "spring festival" aka lunar new years. It starts off with lunar new years(like we have in the states) with the fireworks and firecrackers all day and then just stampedeing at night, and then a few days later there's another night of fireworks(spread out during the day and night), and then a few days after that is the festival of lanterns, which closes spring festival. The festival of lanterns is when "girls your age get to come out once a year" is what my boss said to me. Don't ask. People write wishes on alanterns and let them fly into the sky, which i didn't witness but wish I had.

Anyways, the new years decor was up for maybe 3-4 weeks- and since this year was year of the rat, there were giant rats EVERYWHERE. ok ok... like big cartoony strange ones. hanging off of buildings and such, like 30 ft tall characters plastered on the fronts of shopping malls. It was tacky and strange. Some of the rats heavily resembled mickey mouse. The lanterns were really nice tho- hanging in neat rows and glowing thru the night. I love multiples in an organized manner.

So Mary and Sandy took me on a shopping expedition and to see the lights. But they didn't say that. They said, we meet at 9am and go shopping. They didn't say we were going to shop for 8 hours, eat fast food, and then wait until it gets dark to see rat shaped lights and then force me to take photos with the rat shaped lights!

It was actually reallllly awesome! The rat shaped lights, I mean. They were constructed out of translucent tissue paper stuff in bright colors and lit from the inside. And they were all over yuyuan- on all the building facades, as well as giant rotating center pieces sculptures. The photo shows some of those lanterney sculptures on the water.

For new years itself, we spent the evening with Tucker's family, who'r from bellingham, washington. They are super nice, and their apt has a great view of the city. They hosted a shindig with other expats and it was funny because everyone seemed to be wearing red- and it was just ironic to me to be spending chinese new years with white folks. But it was awesome all the same, ad we each got chinese proverbs. I lost mine. So I took the liberty to looks some up:

"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."

"Add legs to the snake after you have finished drawing it."

"One cannot refuse to eat just because there is a chance of being choked."

new levels of absentmindedness

I reached a new low yesterday when we went out for dinner at hongkong plaza at huihai lu. A 20 minute cab ride from home, hongkong plaza is a brightly lit shopping area with a big electronics mart, and lots of places to eat. We ate at a sushi bar, staring at raw fish on rice roll past us on a conveyor belt. It was not my night and I dropped sushi on my lap and then spilled soy sauce all over the table and myself, so my jeans and my tee were stained with soy sauce. My roomie just laughed at me. Then, once dinner ended I stepped down off the high stool, only to look down and see that I was wearing TWO DIFFERENT shoes. One red/brown dunk, and one beige converse. It was ridiculous.

We got onto the sidewalk just hysterical. and I was really bummed with stains on my clothes and two different shoes on. We had plans to got to Sugar, a bar/dessert place. The bar is all black decor, and the dessert parlor is all white decor. When we got up the stairs the waitress was there to welcome us, and of course everything is white and my roomate is just laughing at me b/c my mismatched shoes were ridiculous. That that I'm any type of fashionista, but I had unzipped my coat before leaving the apt to see what color i was wearing to properly match my shoes with my tee. My roomate said, "i'm surprised that you got your left foot on and your right foot on the proper foot!"

haha. So I got ice cream, which came with all these plastic looking threads on top - like a fluffy made of suger bird's nest! I wasnt' quite sure how to eat it, but it was blocking my ice cream. we picked at it, and it was like eating hair. Except it was hard sugar threads. anyways, it was yummmy, and we enjoyed the view of shanghai from the rooftop seating, and hope to go there again with matching shoes. Many other patrons had just got of work and were in business attire. I felt a tad underdressed.


well, back to narnia!

The office

Teaching english: "raisin": resin. RAY-sen. reysin. RAY-sen. Rey-sin. Ok, good enough.
Learning counting mandarin: 1, 2, 3, uh....10? oops 4, 5, 6, 7, eat. wait wait- 8, 9, 4. I mean 10 (if you understood chinese, thats we sound like)

So for the first few weeks, our chinese co-workers have been tutoring us, teaching us a few words, and we teach them a few in return. My roomate will teach them slang like, "cool" or "sweet" and I'll start giggling and my boss will turn to him and say, "Are you teaching them bad words??? Don't confuse the chinese!" One of the accountant says we talk like 1 yr olds.

Our other supervisors are israeli. so they speak hebrew to each other mandarin sometimes and english to us. Yes, its confusing. AND ontop on that, everyone has secret conversations about us. "blah blah blah Kristina blah. blahablahalahbal" and then I pop up like, "WhaT??" we decided it was unfair, they everyone could speak a diff language that we couldn't understand, so we've decided to make up our own secret language. ok ok, not make up. Pig latin. uckertay is the best at it.

some pics

-cotton candy I bought for 3 kwai off the back of a bicycle(he had the machine mounted, and made it on the spot for me!)

-fellow intern tucker from WA, 6' 7" pretending to be a three yr old.

ordering food and meeting the neighbors

Moving to shanghai is like being a tourist forever. Constantly lost, constantly struggling, and constantly learning. And I'm enjoying everybit of it. I made it home last night by only saying the street names ONCE!

So what interesting things happened this week, you ask. We had dinner at a HK style restrant with boats you eat inside and some trad dimsum on the menu. I picked my favorites, gin doy, cha siu so, and sliced pork in fried fun, and my roomie pointed at a photo and also bok choi. well. They photo he pointed, which looked like spare ribs was actually a chicken head. sliced into fourths!!! It was so in-discernable that I could hardly tell that it was a chicken head!!!! and then i remembered our boss's words. "I try never to order the same food twice" and I said to my roomie, "You ordered it! you have to try it!" (that and i have guilt if i waste food, thanks to mom and dad) so my absolutely grossed out roomie watched in horror as I picked up a piece and turned it over and over with my chopsticks trying to find the meatiest part to sink my teeth into. and then when I finally made contact, he was like, "THATS THE BRAIN!!!" all i tasted was soy sauce. he didn't believe me. "What! you scared??" and he said, "no. I just don't eat chicken heads." eventually he gave in- but luckily there was hardly any meat on it. just bone and beak.

And then we went home, and then the doorbell starts ringing. its maybe 9 or 10 pm. And we have no friends who actually know where we live. I was like, "let's ignore it." Then we thot it might be the landlord!!!! So we started hiding our dirty socks and the food we left out!!!! panic! Then they rung again, so I made him answer it. He opened the door and tried to peer down the stairs, and buzzed them in. Why?, I don't know. I said, "close the door. maybe they'll go to different apt..." and then they rang out apt doorbell, and we mustered up strength and opened the door. (fyi, our landlord is crazy clean freak) ok, so we opened the door, and guess who's standing there? the cops!!!! and we were like wha???? And she turns around and points to her jacket that says, POLICE. My roomie says, "Are you here for me??" and she's all talking and waving her clipboard at us, and we are so clueless. So i give her my residency paper, which proves that I live here. My roomate can't find his. And this whole time I'm trying to get one of my shanghainese co-workers on the phone to help us out, but its a no-go, but then finally my boss picks up and she talks to the cop for something like 15 minutes. When the cop hands my phone back, my boss says, "She just needs the phone number of the apt owner," I don't know why it took 15 minutes to get that message across. It always seems to be the case everywhere. At lunch we all point to the meals we want. When we go with co-workers, they talk to the waitress for 15 minutes to order. Maybe its just easier not talking!

Tommarow tucker is gonna show us the fabric market- where you can have custom clothes made!!!

later!

FAQ

Q: How long will you be there?
A: 1 year, as long as I don't get deported.

Q: What are are you doing- exactly..... slave labor painting lead??
A: I'm interning as a toy designer for toymonster.com, right now working on a line of cardboard toys. Included is some graphic design, reading over people's english, etc.

Q: Is it paid??
A: Yes, but we are in china. The company pays for an apt for the interns, and we get a monthly stipend which isn't much in america, but enough here.

Q: Who do you live with? Where?
A: My roomie right now is Jeremiah, a fellow industrial designer from New York. He went to school in georgia, loves to cook, eat, and watch planet earth. We are expecting a third roomate anytime soon. I just hope they speak english. We live close to work now, in Puxi, far off in the "suburbs" as they call it. We're not even on the tourist maps!

Q: Are you taking mandarin classes?
A: Nope.

Q: How in the world do you survive with only english???
A: I wave my arms a lot, carry a chinese/english map in my purse, and use business cards to get everywhere. hahaha I can say most places in mandarin, and give directions.

Q: Did you know anyone there before going?
A. Just Daniel Low, family friend. He intro'd me to a girl in my area, and I started hanging out with her cell group crowd. We also hang out with our fellow interns, a french guy and a tall guy from Bellingham, WA. Our tall friend's family lives here, so we eat dinner with them every now n then, and they help direct us and such.

Q: Are you enjoying yourself?
A: Of course!!!!! Everyday is an adventure!