I heart Shanghai

Ok, so.... Shanghai rocks. Seriously.

Yesterday, I went to the river (aka "The Bund") and just walked around from late afternoon through sunset and into the evening. I really can't think of any other city that I have ever been to that has a more beautiful skyline. One one side of the river (Pu Dong, the east side) is a dazzling array of sky scrapers decked out with lights and buildings that put Times Square to shame. The other side of the river is comprised of a mile long stretch of a park on the bank of the river neighbored by old colonial-style buildings all lit up in a uniform golden-yellow light, while throughout the park you can watch an amazing blend of tourists and locals out for a stroll. It really is quite amazing.

Today I enjoyed the day in People's Square, and wandered around the Shanghai Museum, as well as some nice shopping areas in Shanghai like Xintiandi (for those of you that know about Din Tai Fung, it is in Xintiandi... I did not yet go in for any soup dumplings (mmmm... xiao long bao...), but I plan to go soon!) In the same day, I got some delicious Taiwanese wrap-thing for dinner, went to a bar that had an american bluegrass band (bluegrass in Shanghai!!), went dancing at a club, and then topped it all off with some meat-on-a-stick street food for a late night snack! (There are people on the sidewalk set up with grills and uncooked meat on sticks, everything from beef to chicken to sausage to who-knows-what. You pick the sticks you want and hand it to guy who grills it then and there, pay a few kuai, and you're good to go!

Earlier in the day I had lunch at a bakery. I love the bakeries here! I don't even know what I ate. I had one roll type thing with bacon and pineapple, and something else that was covered in some kind of spice... whatever they were, they were delicious!

Also, there's a park nearby where it seems like every night they have dancing in the middle of the park. I walked by the other evening and saw people doing the Viennese Waltz! I promised myself that I would go back some night and join in! After the Viennese Waltz, they followed with some other dance that was almost a waltz (it was the same time signature as a waltz) but the style they were dancing wasn't quite the standard waltz that I know... I'll have to watch one or two more songs, but I think I can pick it up pretty easily....

Maybe it's because I have a lot of chinese friends back in New York, or maybe it's because I just spent a month in India (which makes Shanghai feel relatively familiar to New York in comparison), or maybe it is in fact something specific about Shanghai, but whatever it is, I feel more comfortable here in such a short time than I have felt in any other city I've been to.... Most other foreign cities that I have been to, I feel at least some level of hesitation going into a restaurant and trying to order food.... But here, I just walk in and point to something on the menu and see what I get, without worry. I feel like I can spend the whole day just walking around town like I used to do in New York.

I found myself an apartment for the month. One of my roommates is half-taiwanese, half-jewish elementary school teacher who grew up in Brooklyn, and the other is an Ecuadorian girl who went to a German international school in Ecuador and is doing an internship here as part of her college studies in Konstanz, Germany (right on the border with Switzerland)

I'm also taking Mandarin classes during the week. Classes are enjoyable, only three students (including me), which actually almost makes things go by faster than I can learn.... The tones are, of course, difficult, but the grammar is quite simple.... We aren't learning any of the written characters, since that would simply be much too difficult to start out with, so we use pin yin instead (which uses roman letters to write out chinese words), but what frustrates me is that things like menus in restaurants are only written in chinese characters or english.... not pin yin. Since I don't know the characters, I'm forced to order food in English (which actually ends up with me pointing at something on on the menu, rather than any actual verbal communication).... if they wrote the pin yin along with the characters, I could at least try to order in Mandarin... Oh well... I guess that's just more motivation for me to try to learn some of the characters! (Which I am trying to do with some flash-card type apps on my iPhone!)

Ok, that's it for now! Time for bed!