Almost the holiday...

Tomorrow is my last day of school before my 8 day holiday. The holiday is the Lunar Festival and also the 60th anniversary of the founding the the People's Party. So everyone here is super patriotic right now and flags have shown up all around the city overnight. There is supposed to be a huge fireworks display tomorrow night over Pu River (Big river that runs through Shanghai). And you know that the Chinese are known for their fireworks...so I'm excited.

Things to do over the vacation...
1. Go to some landmark/museum every day
2. Stockpile food because apparently supermarkets close down like every other store
3. Talk to my agent and find a new place to live
4. Try to conserve money.
5. Take as many pictures as possible.(That's for you mom). :-)

Tonight I'm going to an all I can eat hot-pot Japanese Restaurant for 88 quai and then out to my first KTV place.
In case you don't know, KTV stands for Karaoke-TV and from what I understand, they are immensely popular here in Shanghai and some of them can be immensely shady as well. Places for men to meet "women of the night." My friends and I are going to a not-so-shady one however and I've been warming up my singing voice all day.

Things I've learned today...

1. The kids and I play a new game. It's called "Let's hit Ezra below the belt with large blocks, then giggle and run away." It's a long name for a game I know, but then again, the game was long...and painful.
2. High fives are international and ageless. A baby high-fived me today.
3. It's very rude to try to humbly refuse gifts. One of the students parents bought me a really nice expensive fountain pen.
4. People don't really believe in lines here. Everyone just kind of crowds around what they're trying to get to and jumping to the front may be rude, but no one really says anything about it.
5. Most of the people here have there natural Chinese names, but they also have English names. Their English Names aren't at all related to their Chinese name. I had a parent today ask me to think up a good English name for her son. I'm thinking Maximus.

Love,
Ezra

Happy One Month Anniversary

I have officially been in China now for exactly one month. It's weird the way time passes here. Truth be told, I hated it here the first couple weeks, but once my I adjusted (to the smells in particular), the last two weeks have absolutely flown by.

Let me elaborate on the smells if I may. I don't notice it anymore, but there was such a wide range of odd foreign smells that drifted by my nose as I walked down the street that it was enough to delight me, confuse me, and disgust me all within the span of about one city block. It would go from garbage smell, to roasting chicken, to garbage, to flowers, to garbage, to some odd other food smell, to B.O (which coincidentally, smells a lot like garbage.)

I know I haven't updated in a week but it has been a pretty uneventful, rainy, humdrum week. So I decided to just comment on some random things about my life here. For starters, I do indeed use chopsticks for every meal. It was pretty hard at first and my hand would spontaneously cramp up during a meal. But apparently I was going about using them all wrong

Chopsticks(quatse) are used for picking up big things, and shoveling everything else right into your mouth, something I'm still not used to. 75% of the time, I have no idea what I'm eating, but it tastes semi-ok. So ignorance may not be bliss, but ignorance certainly is edible...most of the time. I do however eat white rice with almost every meal. It makes people feel fuller and eat less.

October 1st-8th is the moon festival. This is sort of like the Chinese Independence Day and the entire country basically shuts down. I have this entire time off to not spend money so I can afford a place to live after I'm done house-sitting. This autumn festival also marks the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, so security is extremely tight everywhere. What this means for me is that the government has shut down all of my internet proxies so I can't get onto blogger, facebook, youtube, or basically any other site that really matters.

One last thing, I hate rainy days in China. Let me start by stating the obvious...there are A LOT of TINY people here. HOWEVER, when it rains they all carry umbrellas which makes them all exactly 6'7", my height. None of them can see me however because of their umbrellas block their view up and they're all packed so closely together. So whenever it rains, I get smacked in the face with about 1000 umbrellas. I eventually wised up and started using my own umbrella as a homemade shield to protect me from others rather than the rain.

Things I've learned...

1. They can take your temperature by shooting a laser at your forehead.(They do this before letting kids into the school)
2. The ball pit at my school is off limits because apparently it is a breeding ground for H1N1 and foot and mouth disease. (We've had 3 cases of H1N1 in the school during the 2 weeks I've been there. A little unsettling).
3. All the cashiers bow to me after I check out. (Not sure if I should bow back?)
4. Everyone looks at you strange if you say "Bless You" after they sneeze.
5. I saw an item in the grocery store that was called "Priceless." I'm not sure what it was, but it cost 150 RMB.
6. The motion for "come here" is actually your hand turned upside down and waving it like you're shooing them away.
7. The worst insult you can ever say is "Wo gwo won ba da" (wrong spelling). But it means..."Your sperm moves as slow as a turtle." From what I've heard, you can get punched by everyone around you if you even mutter this. Weird, I know.

Miss you all lots.

Love,
Ezra

Beautiful Day

There was a blue sky today. I never thought that I would consider a blue sky a luxury. Or grass. Sidewalks just aren't the same to walk barefoot on as grass is.
But there was a blue sky today, no smog. So it was a good day.

I decided to just go out exploring today for a few hours. It's cheap, I learn a lot, and it's exercise all rolled into one.

While wandering, I saw the Shanghai Museum in the distance and figured that was a good a place as any to spend the day; try to learn about some Chinese heritage. On my way toward the Museum, I had to go into this tunnel to go under the highway. However, it wasn't just one straight tunnel that went under the highway, it had a whole bunch of twists and turns as well as other little tunnels jutting off of it.

Somehow, I stumbled into this micro-museum/hallway which was a recreation of China in the 1930's. I'm not exactly sure why it was there, but it was and I was pretty much the only person there looking around. I'm not sure if it was even open. Sort of like a weird land of the lost moment. Walking through a tunnel and ending up almost 8 decades ago.

After making in through this bizzaro-world hallway, I finally came up on the other side of the highway. Which is odd because I must have walked a mile in what I thought was the right direction, only to come back up on the other side of the road 100 feet from where I started.

For as big as the Shanghai Museum is on the outside, it is relatively small on the inside. Rather than walk around to all the exhibits by myself, I rented a little headset that would explain all the objects to me in a elderly British accent. I was still by myself technically, but it made me feel a little better and was educational. There were four floors in this museum with three large rooms on each floor. Some of the rooms included the ancient pottery room, jade antiquities, evolution of Chinese currency, evolution of calligraphy, ancient religious figures, and old ornate furniture. I would have to say that my favorite rooms were the pottery, religious figures, and jade rooms.

Some of the pieces that I saw in the pottery and jade rooms were so small and so detailed that it was completely incomprehensible to me how the craftsmen and artists could have achieved such beautiful works of art with non-modern tools. And some of the religious figures and statues were so lifelike that it was a little eerie. However, for as many realistic recreations there were, there were just as many goofy looking statues. And both realistic and goofy exhibits were far outnumbered by the number of lions, dragons, and phoenix's that seemed to find themselves on every piece of pottery and painting.


Overall, it was a very educational, but more importantly, fun day.

Things I learned today...

1. People use just as many umbrellas when it's sunny as they do when it's rainy.
2. Pillows used to be made of stone until around 1800.
3. The Chinese people used to use shells as currency. After that they used daggers as currency before finally switching to something a little smaller and less deadly.
4. You have to pay for toilet paper out of a vending machine in some public bathrooms.
5. Try to find a way to cross the highway above ground rather than taking a spooky wormhole tunnel beneath it.

Love,
Ezra

Heading back to School

I just complete my second full day of teaching 2-3 year old Chinese children and I have this wierd feeling in the back of my head that it's going to get very repetitive.

Let me first describe to you the school. It's called Okiki and it's where children come to learn before they go to Elementary School. There are about 300 kids and 4 levels. Pre-nursery (where I teach), nursery, pre-kindergarten, and kindergarten. There are 20 kids in my class, but I have three Chinese aids that help me throughout the day. They are a God-send because none of the children really speak English yet, unlike the 5-6 year old kindergarten class who speak fluent English. It's so unfair.

So it seems the only reason I'm around is to talk as much as possible so the kids hear the English words and start to associate it with what I'm trying to describe to them. But let's face it, they're 2-3 year olds who don't have an attention span to give to someone who speaks their own language. To someone who doesn't speak their language, I'm basically a giant jungle gym that makes funny noises.



These two pictures pretty much sum up the reactions I get from the kids. Happy or confused.





There are a few other non-Chinese teachers there but they're all from Canada or the UK. And there is this one guy who looks like Napoleon Dynamite's twin. I thought he made himself look like it on purpose, but that is just naturally how he looks and acts. I'll try and sneak a picture sometime when he's not looking.

I hope everyone is doing great back in PA and I just want you to know that my thoughts dwell on you all a lot.

Love,
Ezra

The Good, The Bad, and the Chinese

The last couple of days have been filled with a lot of highs, a lot of lows, and as always, a lot of Chinese people.

The Good....

1. I finally got a full time job! I'm working 40 hours a week taking care of 20, 2-3 year-old kids. It's not as bad as it sounds because fortunately they're past the diaper changing stage. Plus I have three other teachers in the room with me who speak Chinese, plus a maid who comes in and out every 15 minutes to serve meals and clean up. Basically, the only reason I get paid 15,000 Quai a month is to literally talk to the kids so they get used to hearing English and start to associate it with things. A little boring, but eh, it pays the bills.
2. The room has a play mat of a city and it's called Tian'anmen Square....made me laugh.
3. My teachers have made it their mission to teach me as much Chinese as possible. The 2-3 year olds are the only ones learning from the kids songs.
4. I might have been booked by a modeling agency to get paid 800 RMB this Friday. The agent said I'm a lot better looking than the other guys, but I can't make it to the casting with the clothing company tomorrow because of school. So I just gave the agency my pictures and maybe they'll call me. Who knows.
   

The Bad...

1. I'm getting kicked out of my awesome awesome apartment at the end of the month. Apparently, my roommate is a diplomat, so she holds diplomatic immunity to prevent the police and other officials from entering our apartment. But with me in the house, the police can use me as an excuse and come raid our apartment which the Luxembourg Consulate does not want to happen. So I have to find a worse place to live for more money, ugh. I'm not even sure why the police would want to raid the consulate of one of the smallest countries in the world. Oh well.
2. I have to commute to work 40 minutes through the most crowded metro stations in the city. I am literally walking in crowds of thousands of Chinese in a small metro station.
3. I don't get paid till October 13th, which means I'll be living very sparingly for the next few weeks.

The Chinese...

1. There are a lot of them.
2. They don't wear hats for some reason. 20 million people in the city, 20 of which wear hats I noticed.
3. If you're over the age of 70 and a man, you don't wear a shirt in public....and no one thinks it's strange.
4. There is a woman at 7 am every morning who has one of the juiciest, nasaliest, spit whorks I've ever heard in my life. I don't even need to set my alarm anymore.

Love Ezra

2 Weeks in,...

I've officially been in China for over 2 1/2 weeks and I've been constantly bombarded with different realizations.

Realizing college is over and I'm not back after the summer (still feels like summer to me.)
Realizing that I am at the farthest point possible away from home.
Realizing that I need a more substantial income coming from something besides tutoring if I am going to be staying here in China.
Realizing that I should have stocked up on Deet before I came.

I think that 2 weeks is about the period when most people get homesick, but I just have to keep trying to stay productive and as bad as it sounds, not think about all my friends back home and all the other things that I miss.

So, now that the sappy stuff is out of the way...onto what I've been doing the last couple days.

Saturday, I took the subway out to this really remote area on the other side of Pudong river to an area where a subway stop that basically had no business being where it was. When I walked out, there was nothing around besides dirt, a few old buildings, dogs, and this subway station. It was definitely not somewhere people had a reason to go to, so why there was a subway station there was beyond me. However, the reason I was there was because I heard about this huge warehouse that had thousands of pieces of furniture and other old knickknacks. It was basically a huge auction house that after people passed away, all their stuff came to a place like this. This includes their heirlooms and some really old neat cultural Chinese stuff.
The only bad thing about this place is that it was huge and it was easy to get lost in plus this was the place where every single misquito in the world is born. A man came over and gave me this weird sweet smelling herbal stuff to wipe on my arms and legs to keep the bugs away, but I think all it did was attract them to me more and away from him. Anyway, needless to say my arms and legs looked like brail after I left. I didn't really get anything, just explored for a few hours, but it is somewhere I definitely going to visit again before I leave China.

I did get an old turtle compass that has the zodiac characters on it and some really neat symbols on the inside. Not sure what they are, but I'll try to find out.

Yesterday, my roommate and I had a housewarming party for me which was nice. It was basically a pot luck lunch/dinner. We were supposed to start at 2:00, but people just sort of came in and out all day and it eventually lasted until 2:00 a.m. with a constant table of food because of people showing up at different times and bringing huge dishes culinary creations.

Also, another first yesterday, I had my first food allergy. It was very mild, but I ate some Chinese spice that made my entire body turn red and blotchy, and it gave me a severe headache, but 20 minutes later it was gone. Really weird...

I have a couple job offers again, but I am think I'm being too picky and I think I'm just gonna do the teaching English job for Shane that all my friends are doing. Currently I'm tutoring Calculus, trigonometry, matrices, and Russian History to these Indian girls who go to University and I am struggling to remain just a little smarter than them in all these subjects. Strictly because it's been about 5-6 years since I learned these mathematical principles myself.

Goals for this week, 1) Get a job, 2) Go to three museums, 3) Start running again. (Some Chinese food is very very unhealthy and very very contributory to love handles)

Things I've learned....

1. Men grow their finger nails out disgustingly long to show their hierarchy status. Apparently, people who don't have to do do manual labor have longer nails, which means that they are economical elite.
2. This breakfast food that I thought was healthy that I ate everyday is one of the most unhealthy foods in the country. It's a ball of dough with meat inside. They deep fry it in oil, then prepare it to make it look healthier....sneaky....
3. Always kiss on the left cheek first when doing a European greeting. This German girl I was introduced to went to the left, I went to the right, and we got to know each other really well...
4. Starbucks is my new American Embassy.
5. I miss home.
6. Apparently, you have to register with the police department within 24 hours of landing in China. I had a very interesting conversation with some cops outside my apartment at 8am this weekend.
7. Even though the amount of money you spend on day-to-day things is less, it was far outweighed by the amount of day-to-day things on which you have to spend. i.e. food, transportation, supplies.

Sorry there aren't any pictures in this blog, but I'm going camera happy the next couple days, so get ready for a lot more pictures.

Love,
Ezra

I put the "work" in Networking

The last two days have been absolutely full of meeting new people along with some weird travel costs served with a side of oddities.

I should start this story by letting everyone know that I have currently been looking for a more stable job. Right now I am tutoring 3 kids and that's enough for food and travel costs, but not enough for a sustainable income. So a recruiter of Westerners gives me a call yesterday about some interested schools who are looking for teachers and asks me to come in and meet with him. I end up traveling go the school he is recruiting for instead of his office, which is on the exact opposite side of the city. Stupidly, I hop in a cab and give the address to his office not realizing it's on the other side of the city and the cab fares turns out to be a 30 minute cab ride for a whopping 140 Quai!!!! Then I realized that's only about $20.00 and that's how much it costs to ride a mile in a cab in NYC.

This recruiter tells me about a private English school and I go and interview with them later that day. Here's where the networking comes in. The Principal of the school is the very jolly 70 year old man who looks like he's 35 and before I leave, he likes me so much that he invites me to start playing Texas hold-em with him and his other principal friends. Plus the recruiter that I met earlier texts me after seeing how big I was and asks me if I want to join his rugby team!

Of course I haven't exercised in a couple months, so I say yes and go to their fitness practice last night that was on the roof of this skyscraper downtown. This giant ex-marine named "Angus" (That's his real name, I'm not kidding) runs us through an intense workout of sprints, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and very nearly throw-ups. Needless to say, I'm extremely sore today, but I met a bunch of pretty cool British guys who say "cheers" after everything, a New Zealand guy who wishes he was British, and a couple french guys who all the British guys make fun of. My new nickname is puberty because I'm the youngest guy on the team.


I also did a little bit of sightseeing yesterday. I went to the Jing an Temple which is one of the oldest religious sites in Shanghai. I found out a little information about it from walking around. Apparently it was destroyed during the cultural uprising in China and it's been under construction for about 30 years. Skyscrapers can be built up around it in under 3 weeks, but it takes 30 years to restore a medium sized temple. I felt really weird taking pictures of this place because there were people all around me praying.


There were a couple smoke statues where you purchase some sticks, light them on fire and pray as the smoke rose to heaven.

Some of the other things at the temple that were very intriguing were....
a parade of monks who would walk around playing music and praying,


a bunch of statues of Buddha and other deities, a giant 200 foot pillar with golden lions of them, and huge walls where people would hang little slips of paper to remember their loved ones. I guess that's why I haven't seen too many cemeteries. The temple really seemed to represent Shanghai, 5% original, 95% new.


Go ahead and visit my flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/41655931@N06/ to see all the pictures from the temple and my other pictures from around Shanghai.

What I've learned today....

1. Rugby guys are really athletic
2. All car windows are tinted here, never noticed that before.
3. There is a very disturbing market next to my apartment, more on that later.
4. About 1 in 10 people still wear masks over their faces, whether to protect from dust or disease
5. There are people dressed all in blue who just walk around and sweep up the streets with some of the most poorly crafted brooms I've ever seen. Just pretty much small sticks attached to a bigger stick.
6. People don't look away, even if you catch them staring at you. I got in a staring contest with a really old lady today on the subway...she won.
7. It always takes twice as long to get anywhere than how long you normally think it should take, and four times as long if you get lost, which I normally do.

Love,
Ezra

Getting Lost, Learning Lots

So it's been a couple days since I've updated this, but I've found that it can be quite difficult to routinely do something in a fairly un-routined schedule.....but I will try to get better.

So I have been extremely lucky to be in the situation that I'm in now. I have an awesome place with a maid for about $200.00 a month. That covers the utilities and the maid. And just recently I was lucky enough to get a bike. My roommate Jo has been in Shanghai for about 5 years and bought a bike to get around. She locked it up a couple years ago and lost the key, so her solution was to go out and buy a new bike. Jo told me if I could get the chain off, I could have a bike. So I went and bought some bolt cutters for $8.00 and got a new bike.

I decided to then take my bike on a little adventure by going out and exploring the city a little bit. I forgot however that the city is a little bit bigger than I thought and proceeded to get lost for about 6 hours. There are a lot of streets that are only one-way for bikes and I would repeatedly find myself in a crowd of 50 bikes and 10 seconds later after an intersection I would be the only bike on the road and people would be staring at me. Which brings me to my next point, since I'm white, I can apparently get away with anything.(Not that I'm going to try mom. :-)

So while getting lost, I stumbled into the People's Park which houses a ton of statues and people just lounging about. It was a great break for my butt which had been sitting on a tiny bike seat for 4 hours.

Also, babies don't ware diapers. They just kinda cut a hole in their pants and whenever "old faithful" is about to erupt, the parents just kind of hold the kid over the nearest trash can.



Onto the job situation. Originally I was going to be teaching business out in Nanchang which is about 3 hours by Maglev (Magnetic Levitation Train that can travel around 350 mph), but some people very familiar with China said that it was a much smarter move to stay in Shanghai. So that's what I'm going to do. Yesterday I interviewed with a company called Learn-First who organize private tutors for the people in Shanghai. It's only been one day, but they really like me and already set me up with 3 students. I'll let you know how that goes once I start on Monday.

Now introducing Ezra's.....What I've Learned Today.

What I've Learned Today.....

1. Spitting is a national pastime here.
2. There are little old men who walk around and who's sole pleasure in life is to pump up bike tires. I learned this when one of them ran at me at a stop light grabbing for my bike wheel. Thought he was mugging me.
3. The Metro is awesome. Clean, fast, efficient. Everything that American public transportation is not.
4. Lots of chinese girls are looking for "big American boyfriend." That's a story for another day.
5. I love dumplings.
6. There is thing here called long lasting milk which can be stored in warm temperatures for 6 months unopened. Don't know how they do it.
7. Cereal is the most expensive thing here and is probably gonna make me go bankrupt because I love it so much.
8. I miss everyone at home an unhealthy amount.
9. This store on the right made me laugh because there aren't too many of them if you get my drift.

Love,
Ezra