I’ve been in China for about a week and a half and finished my first week of work. My office is in a small building outside of the main buildings. A number of people are in and out of the building, but essentially it’s just me, Honglan (my research twin at SCI) and another employee. The doorway to my office is so short that I have to lean down or I’ll smash my head. And I’m not even that tall!
The guards at the front of the office building are amazing. They always say hello and goodbye every time I walk in and out of the complex and they sometimes try to see how much Chinese I know (none) and then talk to me a little in English too. And apparently in Mandarin, if you mispronounce my name and say, “Měilì” it means beautiful. They made sure to point that out! They always brighten my day.
Honglan decided that to help my Chinese learning, she would come and sit with me during every lunch to help me learn Chinese. She really helps me with pronunciation which is so important here with the different tones. I’ve been using Fluenz (a computer program) to try to learn Mandarin, but a computer really can’t tell me when I’m mispronouncing a word. So, it’s been really helpful to have her teach me some better pronunciation, new vocabulary and she’s working with me on learning some Chinese characters. I’m sure I’ll be fluent in no time… or, well, hopefully at least I’ll be somewhat conversant. Today she also brought me a gift: a set of moon cakes. For the Mid-Autumn festival (which follows the lunar calendar and this year falls on September 12th) families get together and eat moon cakes. And now, I too can eat moon cakes. Now I feel very included on the holiday for sure. I can’t wait to try them!
I went on Saturday for my health examination for foreigners. In order to get my residency permit (which should allow me to leave and return to China during my 10 months) I had to get a health examination. Basically, it’s a TON of foreigners all waiting in lines. The masters student that helped me when I first got here went with me to help out. But she basically had to sit in the waiting room while I was shuffled from line to line to get an EKG, chest x-ray, eye exam, etc. After my line waiting was over, I got to walk past a very intense fight between a doctor and a patient. I had no idea what they were saying but it was quite intense.
After the exam, the student and I made plans to go for dinner. We went out to dinner at a Sìchuān style restaurant (she's from that area). The restaurant is really close to my apartment, but it doesn’t even look like a restaurant. There is a woman outside and she puts you in an elevator, when you arrive, it’s a really fancy restaurant that I never would have guessed was there. We ordered a lot of food (that seems to be a trend in China) and everything was INCREDIBLE. I’m also getting more adept at eating with chopsticks. It was really great to get to sit down and get to know her better. She’s a lot of fun and I hope that we can hang out more in the future. The student let me know after the meal that at restaurants, you always should ask for the receipt (the fā piào) because there is a scratch off on the receipt where you can sometimes get money off your meal. We however, just received a message of “thanks.”
After dinner, we went for a walk around the area and I bought a pair of house shoes/slippers. In my apartment (as in many Chinese homes), we aren’t allowed to wear our shoes from outdoors inside. So for the past few days I’ve just been walking around barefoot, but now, I have my very own shoes. They’re pretty adorable. And in the process of buying the shoes, I also learned how to say “bag” in Chinese. That’ll come in very useful when I’m shopping since right now, when I want a bag, I just make a bag like motion and they know what I want… now maybe I can actually ASK for one.
On Sunday, I went to Xintiandi to go to a weekly coffee meeting organized by the Shanghai Expat group. I wanted to go in order to meet more people that I could hang out with in the city, and get an idea about what the expats do here in Shanghai. It was really a great afternoon with a wide range of people from different countries, jobs, and experiences. I had a great time getting to know everyone and I definitely plan on going back in the coming weeks. I even got a few phone numbers, so hopefully I will have more people to hang out with during the week and on the weekends.
Finally, I’ve notice something kind of unusual here in Shanghai. The other day, it was raining rather hard and a man was walking down the street in a t-shirt, speedo style underwear (VERY small briefs) and tennis shoes. I started to wonder if perhaps in the rain trousers were optional. But today, I saw a man just wearing a t-shirt and small boxers on the street (and it wasn’t raining). So apparently trousers are optional all the time in this city…
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