Ok, so Shanghai.... I haven't done much sight-seeing in Shanghai yet. I think, however, that I will have plenty of time for that over the next month. I have decided, in preparation of moving to Taiwan, to start learning Mandarin! I found a school that had another beginner student who wanted to start on Monday, so it will just be two of us in the class, and it will just be monday through thursday, which will leave me with three day weekends if I want to try to go visit other cities in China on the weekends.
I arrived on Thursday, spent the day on Friday looking at a couple schools, didn't do much today because it was cold and rainy most of the day. Tomorrow, I have a few appointments to look at sublets nearby, so that I don't have to sleep on Liza and Collin's couch for a whole month. It has been really great hanging out with Liza and Collin! Plenty of opportunities to eat and drink, which I love. They have invited me to join their trivia-team at a bar nearby on Mondays, so I will once again have my traditional Monday-night-happy-hour! Yay!!!!
Admittedly, I have not seen much of Shanghai. Perhaps my first impressions of it may change after staying longer, and seeing some of the other neighborhoods... but my first impression of Shanghai is that it's AWESOME! Ok, ok, that may have been a bit oven-enthusiastic of an 'awesome', but still it has been great. The subway itself runs very smoothly and is very clean, but more importantly, as soon as I stepped out of the subway, I felt completely comfortable. Liza and Collin are staying in the French Concession neighborhood, which has lots of nice older buildings, and wide tree-lined roads. There is almost no honking and the traffic is so well behaved compared to India (except for the motorbikes, which don't seem to feel obliged to follow any rules or regulations whatsoever, and will even happily come up onto the sidewalk when they want to.... of course at least there are sidewalks, which is more than you can say about much of India...)
We walked through a mall or two, and I was extremely impressed and excited by the quantity and apparent quality of baked goods and sweets! Small dumpling and noodle shops are all around, and the bar scene is quite suitable. There is actually a micro-brewery nearby! And while in India the selection was usually either Kingfisher or nothing, the selection of bottled beer in many places actually includes such New York favorites as Brooklyn Lager and Saranac Pale Ale.
Some of the people I have talked to here describe their first experience as very overwhelming at how big the city is, or how crazy some of the people are, or how different it is from the US. I haven't seen that yet... I don't know if it's because I just spent a month in India, or because I'm staying with close friends who already know the area and speak Chinese, or because the area I'm in is atypical of the rest of Shanghai... It's probably a combination of all of them.
Anyways, I am very excited to get my own room, get started with classes, and start settling in to Shanghai!
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