Dreamscapes from Abroad : 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.