33

The six-weeks-left mark has come and gone! It's crazy to think that before this experience, 6 weeks was the longest I'd ever been away from home. Time in general is so trippy, but the six-week period of time has come to feel both simultaneously infinite and non-existent. I do really look forward to coming home and spending the summer based in glorious Tucson sunshine before heading off to the Bay Area to start college in September, but I know I will also miss this place so much and so I'm trying to soak in every lovely moment of it that I have left! 

This week was pretty eventful! 

On Monday night, we went to an opera performance with the NSLI-Y group. My RD Shasha surprised us with her parents, who are in town from Pittsburgh! It was so cute meeting them. 

The show itself was pretty awesome too! I appreciate 越剧 (Yue Ju / the opera of this region) A LOT more than 京剧 (Jing ju: Beijing opera). The story was kind of hard to follow (the subtitles on screens to the side were helpful but the plot, which regarded family drama, was pretty complicated). The costumes and music were magnificent though! 

And even though we got soaked trying to catch a cab back to the school and almost didn't make it before curfew, it was really sweet to spend some evening time in downtown Shanghai. It's definitely then when I can really appreciate the grandness of the city. 

In our Tuesday music class, we practiced for the upcoming singing competition. 

As a group we'll be singing 最炫民族风 (Zui Xuan Min Zu Feng) where I am grouped with Vitaly from Russia and Kohe & Haiete from Japan as well as rapping with Keiondre, Yas, Paris, and Brady and having a solo of my own.

As a large group we'll also be concluding the competition with the catchy song 再见 (Zai Jian). 

For our individual Chinese song: Maike, Megan and I will be singing 斑马斑马 (Ban ma, Ban ma or Zebra, Zebra)  by 宋冬野 (Song dong ye). It's so beautiful!

We'll also be covering Chairlift's "Bruises" for our English song. 

Wednesday was a foreigner hay day! A high school basketball team from Canada came to play our school's team (the captain of which is Tilden's new friend, Simon). They were visiting a sister school in Tokyo over the past two weeks and no one (including the Canadians) were quite sure why they were here exactly. Regardlessly, they beat us pretty badly, but it was a really good game and fun to meet them! 

A group of French students also came Wednesday to study for two weeks in the Chinese department. 

It's really so weird seeing so many foreigners and hearing so much English! I realized that's going to be such a bizarre aspect about coming back to the States. 

On Friday, Keiondre, Paris, Maike, Tilden and I went to the Fudan international high school for the AP pre-aministration. We got to take a practice test, which made me feel super confident, but we also got to explore around that school a little and found a bizarre international used-book store where I found lots of ancient Arizona travel guides of all things! It was super weird, but also quite awesome. 

On Saturday, I went with Tilden to Qi Pu Lu, a humongous fake market / shopping area. It was pretty nightmarish and overwhelming for me because I hate shopping, but I ended up getting a totally decked out case for my phone (very China, but I was still psyched)... 

We also had fun getting lost in a random abandoned mall a few metro stops over. 

Also I just want to include this picture of kittens! One of the feral cats in the courtyard outside our dorms gave birth! 

32

On Sunday, I went with Paris to help out at the education globalization expo where we performed last Friday. 

We got to give out gifts/information, answer questions and hang out with some really cool Chinese students from our school who will be going to college in the U.S. and England this year.

On Monday we celebrated our NSLI-Y comrade Carmen's 19th birthday at Pancake Day! 

She'll be attending NYU Shanghai this fall and staying here for 4 more years, so we decided as a group to buy her the practical college-student gift of a rice cooker! 

Tuesday, a new American-born/raised Chinese girl, Julia came to our school. She'll finish up the last couple of months this year studying Chinese with the class 1 students before returning to the States. 

Thursday and Friday were our mid-term exams, all of which I feel pretty good about! 

On Sunday, I went with Maike, Megan, and Tilden to my resident director's roommate, Min's Korean church for their Easter gathering! It was pretty fascinating to attend an "underground" church (only a couple approved religions here can officially have churches/services)! The pastor who led the English bible study group was so sweet and we got to meet some fantastic people, including Min's German-Korean boyfriend Daniel; Kinsa, a Korean-American attending NYU Shanghai; Fabio, a Korean-Brazilian studying abroad at Fudan University along with Bo from Thailand and Eddy, from Indonesia. 

We ate a Korean lunch, sang together, talked about resurrection and letting go of fear and decorated eggs that we gave to each other, as part of a Korean Easter tradition. I got Min's which was covered in cutely drawn math diagrams / formulas (as Ms. Yoo she teaches IB math to the Chinese students at our school). 

Overall, I really enjoyed the community and atmosphere at the church and was very grateful to experience it! 

Also I thought I'd include this random photo of flowers. 

I took it while exploring on Monday and thought it captured some of the spring feelings floating around :)

31

On Monday I FINALLY got a chance to check out the climbing gym at the Shanghai Indoor Stadium! 

Although the routes were pretty limited, the walls were tall and I couldn't have been happier to get my hands on some (fake) rock. 

The vibes of the place were great too! There were lots of awesome local and foreign climbers. 

My fellow NSLI-Y chum, Brady, came with me and we climbed for a bit until he had to leave to meet a friend from his underground Christian church. I then made the acquaintances of a nice Austrian guy and his girlfriend; a Bluegrass guitarist with blonde dreads from Virginia and his Japanese friend; and Larry: a fellow gap year student who spent most of this year interning in Nancy Pelosi's office on Capitol Hill and is now traveling around China before going to Harvard next fall. He's headed to Beijing for the rest of this month, but I plan to meet up with him and his friend Grace when they come back to Shanghai in May. 

I'll probably come back a couple of times before I leave, but I can't believe we only have 7 more weekends left! 

Excited to return to Rocks and Ropes in Tucson and explore the real rock of the Southwest and California in the near future though!

This week, a new student came! Her name is Chichiro (like the protagonist in Spirited Away)! She is a Japanese 15 year old who lived in both America and England for many years and thus has perfect English. We're all excited to welcome her into our international student fold.

On Friday, we participated in the 11th annual Shanghai education globalization expo. 

Our school had an exhibition along with many other schools in Shanghai and we also did a performance. We performed what we did for the sports meet earlier this year (Kung fu, yoga and singing). Three of my Chinese friends from choir also performed a drum/guitar/singing number. Next year they'll all be going to college as well! One (Didi) is going to Purdue, one is going to Canada, and one is choosing between UC San Diego and Occidental. There were also many awesome dance, song and sword performances by other schools' students! 

Friday afternoon, I finally went home with my new host family!

My new host parents are SUPER chill. My host mom is a stay-at-home-mom and my host dad runs a construction company from home (my host sister and I actually sleep in an apartment next door that has also been refitted as a bunch of offices). 

My new host sister (Yang Xin or Sharon) is so cool and sweet. She's 17 and really into films (runs the movie review club of the IB department); we gushed over Miyazaki for a while and our relationship is off to a good start! 

My host brother who is 13, is also super cute! 

Saturday, we had a NSLI-Y outing to the movie museum and then I explored some other fun parts of the city with Tilden, Maike, Sara, Brady, Paris.

30

Megan's leg is finally better! No more cast! That also means back to night study for us... It's all good though; I've decided to take my cozy attitude with me to the classroom to study, so all is well. Plus we only have 2 months left, so I might as well squeeze out every ounce of the Chinese high school experience that I can! 

Monday was an eventful day! 

The director of the new international exchange program at my old high school (BASIS) came to my current high school (Jiao Da Fu Zhong) to talk to the parents of Chinese students who are planning to spend a year studying at one of the BASIS schools. She said that they hope to have BASIS students do an exchange and study here in Shanghai as well someday! It is truly such a small world! 

During art, Sara and I led an activity based off of Judith Klausner's Oreo sculptures: 

Actually trying to sculpt Oreos gave me a new found appreciation for her work (it was actually really difficult!) but was super fun. Everyone enjoyed eating their masterpieces afterward as well. 

Mine

Klausner's

That afternoon, Tilden, Maike, Sara and I accompanied Megan out to get a blonde streak dyed in her hair. Maike, Sara and I ended up stopping in at a Chinese medicine / massage place as well. Then we ate out at my favorite Xin Jiang restaurant (I am such a regular there, it's almost embarrassing but I'm actually totally unapologetic because their fried rice and thick homemade noodles are to die for). 

Wednesday I had lunch with YiChen (my language partner). She's trying to decide between going to a summer school activity in the States or Spain over the summer and so we discussed the pros and cons of both. Personally I would totally take the Spain gig! 

On Thursday, I went with Maike off campus to explore.  We used this technique called psychogeography where we decided to get off at a random metro stop and then made other random decisions like following a color around. We found a beautiful river path and some creepy abandoned train yards. It was a great opportunity to expand on my people-in-front-of-doors photography obsession. 

I spent this weekend at the dorm one last time because my new host family was going back to their hometown of Hangzhou this weekend to sweep their ancestors tombs for Qing Ming Jie. I did meet my new host sister though and she is the cutest and sweetest person ever! I am so excited to be a part of their family for these last two months. 

On Sunday I went with Megan and Tilden to the Wild Animal Park! It ended up being quite the adventurous public bus ride through the countryside to get there and although there were some depressing parts (such as the habitats being completely unsuited to the animals species and people throwing fruit into the enclosures and feeding fish with baby bottles), it was definitely a worthwhile experience. My favorite were the ostriches because of their sass, but the lemurs and baby meerkats were pretty splendid! And of course it wouldn't be a Chinese animal experience without China's favorite diplomats: the giant pandas!