I still technically don't have internet. Right now I am sitting in a Starbucks taking advantage of their free wifi and trying to ignore the little Barista glaring at me because I didn't buy any coffee.
Big news! Just when all hope was lost and it looked like I would be couch surfing for my time in China, I found a great apartment. It's in an amazing location near stores, gyms, supermarkets and given its location, it is surprisingly affordable. Granted, I had to go buy everything to fill it up...appliances, utensils, decor, better furnishings, etc. But hey, I'm in China. I pretty much furnished my entire apartment for around $150.00. Now all I need is the INTERNET!!!!
Most of the stuff I got for my apartment is in this place called Old-Town where there are thousands of shops that will all continually try to undercut each other in price while trying to jack up the price to screw over the tall white guy. My new favorite game is pitting two adjacent shop owners against each other while they fight over me. (Well, my money). I went with a couple other native teachers from my school and one of the shop owners actually asked her "Hey! You Chinese! Why you helping the la-wei? (Derogatory term for whites).
Two purchases I'm excited for today are an electric bike for $100 which is going to make my life soooo much easier. Goodbye 30 minute walks to meet people, hello 5 minute bike ride. And also a big fish tank. I always get depressed living alone, but with fish, I'll be depressed with an animal that doesn't care I'm depressed. :-)
Work is going great. We have an entire week devoted to Halloween coming up, even though it is very hard to explain to the natives. For example, I literally spent 30 minutes trying to explain what gravestones were to a crowd of Asian teaching assistants.
I also got tickets from one my my teaching assistants to go to the ATP Tennis Masters in Shanghai! I got to see Raphael Nadal play which was pretty cool. 95% of the people cheered against him and the remaining 5% were teenage girls. No joke, some girl actually yelled "ME LOVE YOU LONG TIME!" I fell out of my chair laughing. Professional tennis is the library of sports. You're in this ENORMOUS arena filled with thousands of people, and it is absolutely silent. It's strangely eerie.My vocabulary is expanding everyday. I discovered a new podcast called ChinesePod which is great to listen to on the metro to work and learn new common words and phrases.
Things I've learned....
- The word for "That" is "Nigga." I haven't seen too many black people in China...
- Chinese T.V. is the strangest thing I've ever seen. It's like everything is done by amateur high school film crews.
- They really need to open up a big orthodontist clinic in Shanghai.
- I have a Chinese Name now. It's Gao Fei. Translated: Fly High.
- I need to watch more soccer. It's the only sport anyone ever talks about, and I know didly squat about all the teams.
- 2/3rds of all Chinese girls don't shave their armpits...that's 3 million sets of unshaved girl armpits in the city, and none of them wear deodorant. Yeah, I did the math
Ezra
1. I told you about ChinesePod ages ago! Remember my 'big brother' Australian Matt? He's the manager of ChinesePod! all the Praxis people are based in Shanghai and they're super cool.
ReplyDelete2. 3 million? I think it's a bit more than that dear. China's got 1.3 billion people...