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春天终于到了！Spring has finally arrived!

The weather has been absolutely stunning this week; even on rainy days, it feels warm and sweet. 

This Monday was the final soccer game of the tournament! Our boys took first place (4-0) in a gallantly played match against the Xin Jiang team. 

Maike's Thai friend Yok who was in town came to visit the school that day. She is so sweet and cute! 

On Thursday, I signed up for the HSK (the language level test required by my program). It'll take place May 10th. 

I decided to take the HSK 5 rather than the 6 (the highest level) because I would be the only one doing it and although I think it would be possible for me to pass the 6, I'd have to spend the next month studying my buns off. So I decided I'd rather do swell on the 5, be with my friends and and enjoy other aspects of this experience during the last couple months. 

Additionally, the HSK is only really used in attending Chinese university or getting jobs in China and since it expires after 2 years and I'll be at university in the States for 4, there's no point to stress over it just for bragging rights. Finally, the AP Chinese test (which I'll take May 7th) is actually more important/useful to me because Stanford will take it as a language credit! Anyway, it seems I just have the final academic hurdles of the HSK, AP, finals and research presentation in May left! 

Friday we went to the Shanghai botanical gardens, which was not as impressive as I was expecting (a tad bit too manicured for my taste), but was pretty splendid all the same (especially since I am slightly obsessed with plants). 

Saturday, I went back to my host family's apartment in the suburbs one last time to say goodbye. 

Due to a variety of complicated factors, I am unfortunately having to switch host families. It makes me quite sad, but honestly it's best for everyone involved.  I am so grateful to them for opening their home up to me this year and know that we'll still maintain a good relationship into the future. 

The plan as of now is that I will meet my new host family this week and go home with them next weekend (which is actually a long one because of the tomb sweeping festival or Qing Ming jie 清明节). 

There is apparently a sister (who is in the IB department and plans to study abroad for college) and a younger brother! They live very close to my original host family's old apartment (about a 10 min walk from school and a 5 min walk from the metro station). 

I look forward to spending these last couple months with them and having more access to all that the city has to offer during the weekends.

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On Monday, after grocery shopping at Tesco and going out for sesame sugar bao zi with Sara and Megan, Maike and I hit up the huge knitting factory that we stumbled upon last week behind the metro station. We bought some yarn and needles to start knitting some sweet scarves! 

The third soccer game of the tournament was this past Tuesday. Our team totally ruled and won 4-0. 

The final competition will be next week against the Xin Jiang students' team, which will be a close match! Those students are all brilliant athletes. 

This Friday we had our 月考 (monthly tests) in comprehensive Chinese, oral Chinese and Listening. I feel pretty good about all of them! 

I stayed in the dorms this weekend, so Friday after school I went with Maike (who was also dorming it) to a famous street where they film lots of movies just a few metro stops away. 

We then got our nails done and ate some delicious Xin Jiang spicy sour cabbage fried rice (酸辣白菜炒饭). It was a nice night out on the town. 

Saturday morning, we went to an absolutely rad barcamp "unconference". It was kind of like a mini TED conference: a free-for-all where Shanghai locals and foreigners from all walks of life could give talks and share ideas on a variety of subjects (mostly related to technology and innovation). 

I went to a load of interesting and inspiring talks. There was one on the real time web that was cool. Another was on using the Internet to create networks of girls in privileged/unprivileged communities to build creativity and leadership by helping each other learn math/science/language. I thought the aspect of emphasizing equal exchange between communities was pretty neat: instead of it just being the privileged girls tutoring the less-privileged girls, they both learn and help each other simultaneously; girls in a rural Chinese village can teach American girls Chinese as they learn math or girls in Shanghai and Ghana can tackle a computer science program together, for example. I also thought that the idea of using these grassroot club networks to encourage the development of extracurricular confidence, creativity, and entrepreneurialism in Chinese school girls was a meaningful endeavor. 

Some of our own also decided to give on-the-spot talks! Maike got so inspired that she decided to give a wonderful talk on the way that writing can change the way we perceive the world. Keiondre also decided to give an awesome talk about utilizing today's technology in the language learning process. 

The last talk I went to in the afternoon was given by Sven, the Shanghai regional director of the burning man festival (who was actually present at the first burning man). He showed a video about the original Nevada burn, talked about the principles of the festival as well as alternative art and technology in general. He also discussed the upcoming satellite burn that they are planning to hold on an island a couple hours away from Shanghai in early June (actually beginning the 6th, the day I return to the States). I really look forward to going to the festival in the States someday and found it really interesting to see the way that they are trying to adapt the ideas here to attract a Chinese audience. 

All in all, it was a wickedly sweet day and made me really excited to totally nerd out with rad people in college and beyond!

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Monday was our first official choir practice of the second semester (there were a few false starts and then auditions for new members). This semester it's all student run, which will be a little hectic but fun all the same. This time we started on "You Raise Me Up".

Megan finally got her wheelchair on Monday as well! We were all so excited that we went off campus to celebrate with sesame sugar bao zi! 

Tuesday, we performed our musicals (The Boy Who Cried Wolf and the Ballad of Ricky Bobby). They were pretty hilarious and now we are moving on to bigger, better and more public musical adventures...

Tuesday afternoon, our boys played their second match of the soccer tournament. We won again (2-1) but this game was much closer and quite rough. Luca and Koki both got a little beat up, although all is well now! Soccer is probably my favorite (conventional) sport to watch and it's a sweet feeling to have an awesome team to cheer for!

On Wednesday, we had a really good discussion in our comprehensive Chinese class about environmental protection. I always love when I find myself having the same kind of serious/philosophical conversations that I might be having in English but in Chinese rather than just the "what are your hobbies?" type. 

Wednesday afternoon, Maike and I went to the graduating IB students' art exhibit, where there were some really excellent pieces, especially those by our friends Miu and Linda who will be studying in Chicago and NYC next year, respectively. 

Miu's work:

Linda's work:

Maike and I also decided to continue our crafty adventures with some poetic corpse drawings, poems and stories. 

I drew the head and feet: 

I drew the torso: 

I'll also share the poem where I started with one line, Maike wrote a line without looking at mine and so on until we filled up the post card on which we were writing:

You taste like sunshine and smell like rain.  

Sweet misery cooks the soles of your feet, footsteps raw and tang-blooded. 

Frozen feet gaggled around tightly-knit mittens, an homage to armless boys who know which path. 

They speak with muted gestures and longing.  

Heavy thunder under worn out clothes, hearts carved out by Mayan doctors and Transhumanist soldiers.  

Why Mr., your hat is grand. And so we began our fedora worship.  

Swinging between can-do and claw footed bathtubs, rooted pianos and throats made of glass. 

Threading beginnings into endings crawling like lizards out of skins yellow eyes and lipless mouths. Hungry ghosts twirl around my lamppost, wrapping themselves into bolts of cloth.  

Our neighbor was a woman with a floating voice and flour-fried hands she sang lullabies you write the lyrics.  

Fingernail tips introducing you to the chocolate ice, we fall again
3...2...1... Blast off  

The atmosphere like a flower unfurls, those watching fold their pinkened hands and weep.  

Stas never looked so beautiful. 

26

This week, our comprehensive Chinese teacher (孙老师: Sun lao shi) gave us the task of asking people who worked at the school (guards, cafeteria aunties/ayis, cleaning ladies, etc) how they saw Shanghai ("你的眼中的上海怎么样?"). It was a fun task and although lots of people were too embarrassed to be filmed (as my teacher requested), I made a lot of friends and I even got to go behind the scenes in the cafeteria to record ayis chopping food!

In our Monday art class, we carved seals with our own traditional character names in them (see my stamp below). Carving them was a lot harder than I expected, but I really enjoyed it (much more than calligraphy, which for some reason frustrates me to no end, that and doing origami, although my Japanese friends have showed me some of the true beauty in both of those arts. I still prefer to watch them do it though). 

Monday afternoon, I went with my American classmates to sign up for the AP Chinese Language and Culture test, which we'll be taking in May.

Our international boys also competed their first game of the school soccer tournament Monday afternoon. Everyone played excellently and we won 4 to 0.

Da Shan, Aya, Yasu, Fernando, Reo, Koki, Yas, Luca, and Aki

Tuesday, we started working on our musical: my group (Saori, Maike, Sara, Maki, Tilden, Eriko, and Megan) are doing a version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" Chinese Opera style with Kung fu, singing and dancing where the wolves and sheep end up colluding to battle and slay the shepherd in the end. The other group is doing "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" Chinese Opera style. It should be interesting.

Tuesday, we also had a quiz-style competition in our comprehensive Chinese class concerning knowledge of China. I tied with Keiondre for second place (Paris got first), and I got this snazzy wallet as a prize! 

On Tuesday afternoon, we started work on a "host family experience guidebook" on which the State Department will be putting their seal and which will be used for future exchange students, host families and gathering funds from Capitol Hill for more of these kind of programs. Apparently it's a really big deal, and we all feel lucky to be the chosen group to make it! 

In our Wednesday PE class, we started learning Taiqi (太极拳 Tai ji quan). I'm not a super patient person, but I've been working hard on my mindfulness practice while in China and it looks like it's paid off because I had a blast! Apparently we'll be getting fans soon to incorporate into the movements, which will be sweet! 

On Wednesday I also had lunch with my language partner from last semester (Yichen). I interviewed her for my research project and she told me about some school rivalries (she is my go-to girl for school gossip, not that I ever seek it out haha). We also talked about our vacations and plans for this semester, including the club she is starting to raise awareness about endangered animals. It was nice catching up and I look forward to continuing our weekly lunches for the rest of the semester! 

Our outlines for our second semester research projects were due Friday. In excited to continue delving into Traditional Chinese Medicine!

25

This week was a little hectic. Megan, my roommate, broke her ankle in gym class on Monday which meant we had to help her brave the quite disabled-unfriendly battlefield that is the Chinese high school (no elevators to our classrooms which are all on the fourth floor, squat toilets, etc). To make it even worse, it rained all week (her cast, which she is going to have to change every week for two months, is totally un-waterproof). 

We have gotten pretty creative using raincoats and plastic bags though, and making the extra 15 minutes it takes to make it to the school as fun as possible. 

I am pleased to act as her willing servant and run out to the post office or hole-in-the-wall shops for delicious noodles and the like. 

One plus is that she doesn't have to attend night study (our daily self-study time in the classroom 6:30-9:15) and I get to stay in the dorms with her to help her with homework questions and keep her company, which is awesome because I was not a fan of night study (I never needed the structure of sitting in a classroom to get all my work done and so although I got the chance to experience an important aspect of Chinese high school, I can now do my work in a cozier environment for the next couple months). 

Despite everything though, Megan is such a trouper, and her endlessly positive attitude and strength is so inspiring. 

In other (less exciting) news, in order to save time so I could escort Megan to school, I switched up my breakfast routine this week: instead of my daily noodles, I started grabbing 包子 (baozi: steamed buns filled with chopped greens, mushrooms and tofu) from the second floor of our school's 餐厅 (can ting: cafeteria). They are actually so tasty and filling and I am happy to mix things up. 

Even though there are countless things about Stanford's dining options that I look forward to, I think I will definitely miss the Chinese breakfasts of noodle soup and steamed buns. 

Another happening: our class started an official rule this week where we are only allowed to speak Chinese (not Japanese or English) when in the classroom. If we are caught doing so, we have to put one 块 (kuai: "Chinese dollar") in the newly-made box at the front of the classroom. 

It won't really be that difficult (although we already have a couple kuai in there). Honestly, I'm not sure why we are just starting this now and not at the beginning of the year (I suppose some of our levels were quite basic at the beginning), but better late then never!

Finally, on Friday I made my first official (two metro lines / two bus) commute from school to my host family's apartment in 南桥 (Nan qiao: a suburb of Shanghai) where I'll be spending my weekends for the rest of my time here. I did so by myself because my host sister had a night class that she had to attend. It took three hours (rush hour of people returning home for the weekend), but I was proud to have mastered at least this basic step of transportation navigation. 

I had dinner at home with my host parents and grandparents for my host granny's birthday. I had some interesting conversations with my host granddad, one in particular about the horrible state of the (factory) farming industry, while being so grateful to be enjoying such delicious homegrown/homemade grub.