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.