Freaky weather and Game Shows

I have been in Shanghai for over three months now and to say it has been an interesting experience would not even come close to doing it justice. This has been more then an "interesting" experience, this has been nothing short of an 3 month out of body experience. There are just so many things that are overwhelmingly different from what I'm accustomed to, that it has nearly numbed my senses altogether and nothing can surprise me anymore.

This past weekend I had another once in a lifetime happening that will stay with me for a long time...I was on a Chinese dating game show. Just to put an image in your head for what it was like...It was a weird mix between the NewlyWed Game and a Looney Toons Cartoon. Chinese TV is extremely odd.
Now that you have that image, let me go back and explain exactly what happened. The show is called "I Love You," but it is pronounced with the Chinese way of saying the words. So it actually sounds like "I Rohu Ou" The hosts were this chinese bald guy with glasses in a white sequined suit with two girls who were also is cheesy sequined barbie doll dresses.
My friend was the actual contestant on the show and myself and two other guys were his "entourage" sitting behind him making him look good. There were also two other groups of Chinese guys who were our competition. On the other side of the stage there were three groups of girls who did the typical chinese girl thing, giggle a lot with their hands over their mouth and look shy. The whole show took about 3 hours to film and there is way to much to talk about but I'll just give you the rundown of some of the odder things.

1. The girls had to guess whose wallet belonged to whom by riffling through it.
2. The Lichi Challege - The guys had to pick up the girls and do squats while naming off as many fruits as they could think of.
3. The girls had to make turtle soup and the guys had to guess who made each soup. They even showed the video of the girls killing the turtles. The ASPCA would throw a fit.
   
4. Apparently we were supposed to have a chant memorized to yell. All the chinese groups did, we didn't so we looked ridiculous
   
5. The host looked like an odd combination of Mr. Clean and a turtle.
   
6. There were cartoon sound effects going on the entire time they were filming. Like weird bells and whistles, springs, beeps, honks, and every other sound effect that was ever used in loony toons. Not exactly sure why, but I think they think it's cute.
7. There was a guy in a giant panda suit that would run in and out randomly for no apparent reason at all.

It's really something that I have to explain in person, and I will when I come home for Christmas.

The weather has also been really strange this last week. It was freezing last week, then it went back up into the 60's and low 70's for about 4 days...now it's freezing again. China's weather is playing with my emotions.

Things Ezra has learned...

1. The number 8 is extremely lucky and you actually have to pay extra for it to be in your telephone number.
2. It is also lucky to have really long mole hairs....and really disgusting
3. Electric blankets might be the best thing ever invented...ever.
4. I got an amazing haircut for roughly $.80 cents. Gotta love China.
5. Gie Yo!!!! (spelled wrong) is what you yell to cheer somebody on. It literally means "Add Oil!"
   
6. I'm extremely excited to come home in 2 weeks.

See you all soon.

Love,
Ezra

warm, warm, warm.....COLD!!!!

Holy geeze it's cold!

The temperature dropped from 28 degrees Celsius one day this week to 4 degrees Celsius and rainy the next day. For those of you who don't understand Celsius (and don't worry, I don't either and still convert it to Fahrenheit through google, I'm so American) that's about 80 degrees to 40 degrees in the span of 24 hours. There was a huge cold front that blew down from Mongolia and winter came right along with it. And to top it all off, as a result of this extreme weather change, there is a huge smog cloud that has settled over all of Shanghai. I haven't seen the sun in about a week and a half.

But it's not all bad, my contract with Okiki Elementary School was coming to an end December 1st, so I went job hunting again and oh man did I bag a big one if you'll pardon the hunting analogy. (I'm so Perry County-ian)
Starting January 1st, I am going to be the new branding co-manager for all of Asia for Concho Y Torro. Concha Y Torro is the number one wine company from Chile and the number seven wine company in the world. I'm not exactly positive what all the finer details of the jobs entail, but I know I will be doing a lot of traveling around Asia. This includes all over China, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, most of the Stans, Mongolia, Russia, and maybe India. I was also told that one of my new big projects would be to try and set up some sort of connection to sell our wine to the troops in Afghanistan which so far no other wine company has been able to accomplish yet.

I have to take this with a grain of salt however. Even though the job was technically offered to me, I have to complete a presentation over Skype to a gentleman in the UK who approves all the funding to the Asian branch to make sure that I'm competent for this position. The presentation is on a hypothetical marketing problem that is to be given to me this weekend. I'm sure I'll do fine, but if you're reading this, visit this website and knock on the screen. Thanks.

I'm planning on coming home for Christmas on December 12th, so I'll see everybody soon.

Ezra has learned that...

1. Gas water heaters don't work very well. I hate room temperature showers. Especially when the room temperature in my apartment is 50 degrees.
2. Chinese people love to do this weird thing to their fruit that include drying it out and putting this weird type of sugar on it that makes it taste awful.
3. The school I'm working at doesn't want me to leave and the principal actually pleaded with me to stay. That made me feel good and bad all at the same time.
4. Haircuts range from $1.00 dollar to $100.00 dollars depending on where you go. And how nice the hair parlor looks from the outside doesn't determine the price. The $100.00 dollar one was hole-in-the-wall barber.
5. Space heaters stink.
6. Foot massage parlors are AMAZING!!!!! I'm investing in them when I get back to the U.S. I was a little weirded out at first, but trust me, WORTH IT!
   

Love,
Ezra

What's new...

Sorry.

I haven't updated my blog in about two weeks now. Sorry. I got myself into a routine that unfortunately left out blogging. But I'm starting a new routine this week that will allot more time for getting online and being in more contact with friends and family back home.

So, since we've been apart for so long, and I have been in China for almost 3 months now, let's discuss "What's new?"

Two weeks ago I went to the zoo with my preschool class. It was a pretty typical zoo with some atypical occurrences. There is one part of the zoo where the tour guide takes you in a van through the animal enclosures to let you get an up close view of the animals in their habitat. There are Jurassic Park gates enclosing each animal to ensure that they stay from each other. For example, to ensure such things that the lions don't get in with the bears, and the tigers don't get in with the adorable little spider monkeys. Well, the gates didn't work. As our bus was going through the gates, a cheetah got into the gazelle enclosure and we got an ultra rare showing of watch the jeep chase the cheetah out of gazelle land.

Also, they actually encourage people to throw food at the chimpanzee, just as long as it's not self prepared, which could make the animal sick. I watched for 15 minutes and the ape really had a thing for cookies and gatorade. It was kind of cruel how people threw food at this chimp, but he didn't really seem to mind as you can see. He's actually holding his hand out and asking for more.

Overall, it was an extremely fun day and my kids really seemed to enjoy themselves.

My apartment in starting to come together nicely. I've pretty much devoted my last 1.5 paychecks to getting furniture, internet, paying utilities, cooking stuff, food, and everything else that would make an apartment more then just 4 walls and a ceiling. Now that I'm pretty much all settled my next paycheck goes exclusively to Christmas gifts for friends and family back home.

Like I said, I'm starting a new routine and I am going to be touching on a lot more topics in the postings to come. (Food, restaurants, clothing, shops, weather, and other cultural tidbits)

Things Ezra has learned...

1. It's extremely rude to say bathroom. You ask for the xi xo che (hand washing room).
2. My Chinese name is Gao Fei. Given to me by my Chinese teachers for two reasons. It literally means Fly High, because I'm so tall. And also, when you say it, it sounds like Goofy and apparently I remind them of Goofy when I'm playing with the children...
3. How annoyed I get when someone stands in the middle of the escalator rather than on one side to let people pass.
4. There is this tiny apple that looks like a crab apple that people absolutely love here. I'm not a fan.
5. Persimmon's are gross. They're like the mutant child between a tomato and an overripe peach.
6. People will push, shove, yell and pretty much do everything except draw blood to get that last seat on the metro train.
7. Gun ownership is illegal in China.
8. If my mom could see me riding a bike through the city, it would probably give her a heart attack seeing how close other bikes and cars actually get to you.
   

Talk to you very soon.

Love,
Ezra