Shanghai Museum

This week has been a little strange because we had school from Sunday the 22nd to Friday the 27th, have Saturday off, and then will have school again on Sunday and Monday before spending a 7 day break with our host families for China's national holiday（国庆节guo qing jie), which I will talk about in my next post. 

This week was pretty amazing though. We went to the Shanghai Museum which had lots of cool traditional Chinese art works as well as an exhibit on French Impressionism. 

We also had a school basketball game (International Student Department vs. IB Chinese Department), which was pretty exciting even though our team lost. 

I also participated in my first model UN meeting (with which I am replacing my tea art class because it's part of the Chinese elective curriculum and occurs at the same time). This meeting we were discussing civil rights for "intelligent robots" just to get used to speaking protocol. It was conducted completely in Chinese! But I'll participate in English, at least at first. A lot of the participants are supposed to be speaking English because they plan to go abroad for college, but it's definitely going to be such a great experience and will help me with my own language progress and help bridge the gap from the international department and make lots of Chinese friends

Having host siblings is helpful too and we're all forming close bonds with the Uyghur students. 

Here is our mUN ad calling participants: 

There are a few other clubs with the Chinese students that I plan on joining including a choir and a "roots and shoots" gardening/recycling one! 

This week we also started preparing for our semester research projects. I am planning on doing mine on urban ecology: examining the cultural role of public space and green space in Shanghai. 

Finally, the director of our implementing organization (American Councils) came to take care of some business in China this week and stopped by to say hello. We got the absolutely phenomenal opportunity to attend a VIP reception at the U.S. Consulate General's residence in the French Concession sector of Shanghai. I guess the foreign service officer at our security briefing was really taken with us and extended the invitation, which was mostly for American college students studying in Shanghai. I met some really interesting people including foreign service officers and a poet living in Nanjing this year on the Fullbright scholarship. But unfortunately they confiscated our phones/cameras before entering, so I don't have any pictures from that event.

After spending the National holiday traveling with my host family, I will go with the school's international department to a "military training camp" (in actuality, it's a resort-like venue full of fun team-building activities) which should be really interesting! 

I'm also really stoked because I just found out that in November, we'll be traveling with the school to Beijing! 

Time certainly already feels as if it's flying by, and I have the feeling it will continue to pick up speed.

Early during our second week here...

Early during our second week here, all the international students went to the hospital for the physical exam that's required for residency. It was certainly an efficiently-run and interesting experience. I was poked and prodded into different rooms for eye, blood, and chest X-ray tests (which also included a test where they hooked instruments on our wrists and ankles and plugged shocker-looking devices on my chest). There were an assortment of other tests as well. It was definitely my first ultrasound (to check for spleen irregularities)! 

On Wednesday we met our host families and had a ceremony at which I gave a speech representing my classmates in Mandarin! 

My family is so sweet and perfect. My host sister (思骑 / Siqi or Zoey) is a first year at my school. Here we are together at a park: 

During the week, she lives with her grandmother at an apartment just down the road from the school, while her parents live in the Pudong "suburbs" across the river. During weekends the parents come to the Yingao house and during longer breaks (like this one for the Mid-Autumn festival or 中秋节 zhong qiu jie) they all go to the "suburban" house, which is so big and beautiful and has absolutely stunning views of the city and sea from it's vantage point on the 23rd floor. This is the view of the "suburbs" from my window: 

The Yingao house is a similarly stylish 10th floor apartment, where Siqi and I will share a room. 

My host family is originally from Shanghai so the grandparents speak 上海话 (shanghai hua) or Shanghainese, although they can speak accented Mandarin. The parents can also speak Shanghainese but my host sister can't and they use Mandarin except with the grandparents. 

My host father is a manager of a company and travels a lot. My host mother is also a business woman but on weekends she helps her mother (my host grandma) make super delicious meals. I helped her make dumplings (饺子）and she taught me how to make a variety of other dishes. Here she is cooking a tofu dish: 

I tried some new things this weekend in the culinary realm, including crab (which I did not like at all), river-snail (which was actually okay) and a black nutty fruit that's collected off of the tops of rivers and only found in the Shanghai area. I also helped make a dish with a potato-like thing that oozed mucous but which actually turned out to be quite tasty and sweet. A lot of the vegetables (the amazing eggplant and pumpkin for example) were grown on the grandparents land about 40 minutes from Shanghai. 

I am so so happy with my family. I get to speak Mandarin non-stop (teaching them the English words for things like "peanut" and "full moon" here and there). I feel like we're able to communicate really well. There was one funny incident where my host grandfather (who learned Russian in school the way that kids now learn English) tried to teach me Russian in his accented Mandarin. I have no idea why, but for some reason lots of people in China think I'm Russian... 

In addition to teaching me to cook Chinese dishes, my host mother also got really into helping me with my Mandarin, especially beautifying my written Chinese. She gave me lots of cute primary school practice books, helped me learn the meaning of a bunch of radicals that she says will make it easier to memorize words, and took me to the library to attempt to read random books and magazines. I wasn't really able to read much at the library, but I got to read a lot of the Neil deGrasse Tyson and Oliver Sacks books I brought this break. 

In general, we spent the holiday relaxing: cooking, eating, doing homework, playing cards, walking around the nearby parks, and playing badminton (I'm going to be a fiend at that game by the time I get back, so y'all better watch out)! 

They say they are excited to show me around Shanghai (I'm psyched to go to the Pearl!), show me their farm, and take me to nearby places (like Hangzhou, where my sister Xóchitl was on the NSLI-Y program this summer)! 

After these terrific few days, I came to the school for Saturday night study (晚自习 wan zi xi) to get right back into the swing of Chinese school! 

Before I end though, I can't have a post about 中秋节 without including a moon cake picture! So here you go: 

人乡随俗 Arrival in Shanghai

人乡随俗

After spending an intense pre-departure day of orientation in Washington DC and traveling for a full 24 hours, I arrived in Shanghai with my 8 American fellows on Sunday, September 8th and dived right into life at our Chinese high school (the short name of which is 交大附中：jiáo dà fú zhōng). It's the 4th ranked high school in Shanghai (a city that ranks 1st in the world). It also has an amazingly beautiful campus in the northwest part of the city. 

Although we are truly immersing ourselves in Chinese secondary school culture, we are technically studying in the international department of the school. Partly this is because it's more productive for us to focus on language classes than the math/science/etc classes and preparing for the 高考 (Gaokao or infamous Chinese college entrance exam). It's also actually against the law for non-Chinese students to be integrated into Shanghai school's Chinese department/curriculum. 

The international department is fairly integrated into the school culture though and we often find ourselves following the 成语 (chengyu) or idiom that is the title of this post: (ren xiang sui su: when in Rome do as the Romans do) when it comes to studying (from 7:30am to 9:15pm), dorm-living (points off for any untidiness or having your bed not perfectly made), diet (scarfing down seaweed and breakfast noodles in the cantina), and so on. 

The international department, like Shanghai itself, is extremely wonderful and diverse and I look forward to making friends from all over China and the world. The Americans along with me on the NSLI-Y program are themselves quite diverse, coming from Colorado (Maike), Vermont (Tilden), North Carolina (Paris), Missouri (Megan), Ohio (Keiondre), Washington (Brady), Kentucky (Sarah), and Kansas (Carmen).

As far as our academic program, other than language classes (speaking, comprehension, reading, writing), we are taking art (in which we've done a variety of paper cutting), music (where we'll compose songs, learn music recording software and traditional Chinese instruments and where I'll get to play my guitar! I hope to also join the music club too), gym (where we first learned the Chinese morning exercises that are done daily by everyone on the field as the flag is raised), and computer programming. I'm also taking "tea art" as an elective and part of our scholarship requirements include 2 semester research projects (in oral and written Chinese) and an extracurricular project, both of which I greatly look forward to...

Anyway, the language classes are split into three groups of international students. People for whom this is their second or third year here are in class 3 (they're basically on the same level as native speakers and are studying as such but can't do so with the Chinese nationals). Some of these students are particularly friendly though and I've befriended a Japanese boy named Judi, a girl from Kazakhstan named Mira and a girl from North Korea named Ruri. 

I'm in class 2, which has been mostly review at this point and we are all at different levels, but I can still tell I will learn A LOT over this year. My class has Paris, Brady, Megan, Keoindre, Carmen, Sarah, Jens (a GBC--German born Chinese boy), Xiazhi (a Japanese girl), Yas and Leo (both of whom are also from Okinawa). Tilden and Maike are in class 1 with Noah (from Germany), Eric (from Norway), Eriko (from Japan), Johanna (from Estonia, Julie, Antony and another boy who barely talks and is never around (all from Siberia). 

Tilden, Maike and I also met some girls from the Xinzhang province in the far northwest, Muslim, and semi-detached corner of China. Our school has a high population of these students who are here on a cultural exchange scholarship for high school from the Chinese government. These girls are so sweet and taught us some of their regional dialect (which is a mix of Arabic and Chinese) and a traditional dance! All the students here are very nice. 

Our teachers are also so sweet, so even though the school rules are very strict and we are in classes for over 13 hours a day (we do have food breaks and a longer break in the afternoon for activities), it's all such a blast. 

During the week we stay in the dorms like the Chinese students and on weekends and breaks we go home and live with the family of a Chinese student who's at our school. 

This week we finished up our program orientation (part of which included a security briefing at the American consulate where we met up with the NSLI-Y kids who are in Changzhou on AFS) and this weekend we are exploring Shanghai. 

I look forward to meeting my host family next weekend though and celebrating the Mid-autumn festival with them (yes, moon cakes)!

I am extremely busy so I'll just finish with some photos.

Our school building and the library as seen from the gym

Tilden, Maike and Guli and Remu, two girls from Xinzhang

The Pudong skyline as seen from the Bund 

The Shanghai NSLI-Y Academic Year family
(Paris, Carmen, Maike, Me, Tilden, Keiondre, Brady, Sara, Megan) 

Pre-China "Mail-to-Blogger" Test

Blogger is blocked by the firewall in China, so I will be using the "Mail-to-Blogger" feature of the platform, whereby I compose emails that automatically become posts.
I hope to post about once a month.
If you'd like to get in touch with me, shoot me an email at jenai.mrl@gmail.com
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