August 2007 Journal
My pictures are finally slightly more organized. Check this out:Huai'an
Nanjing
Shanghai
Watch for pics from Zhenjiang someday soon!
Arriving in Zhenjiang - Wednesday August 29th, 2007
The sun was setting as I was arriving in Zhenjiang, and by the time I reached my University apartment, it was pretty much dark. The building is beside the University's visitors' hotel. From the outside, it looks very run-down and sketchy. In some places, it would probably be condemned! Leo, the University rep with whom I'll be spending a lot of time, brought me upstairs to the third floor and into the apartment. At first, I noticed that the apartment was larger than I expected but was much less furnished than I thought it might be. (Mostly, it didn't have the promised computer on the desk, and I was worried.) There was dust everywhere and he explained that it hadn't been lived in during the last semester. He gave me my key, gave me a large bottle of water for the dispenser, and left me alone.
For anyone who has never been left alone in a dark and dirty apartment in a sketchy-looking building in a small town in the middle of China... let me just assure you, it's scary! I'm a grown man and I haven't been afraid of the dark since I was maybe 4 years old, but this was enough to send chills down my spine. I have a ratty little yellow blankie that I've kept with me since I was born. I definitely found him and held him very close to me that first night. (Yeah, yeah... grown man with a little yellow blankie. Go ahead and make fun, but it made me feel better!)
I unpacked everything from my suitcase. I was exhausted and scared, and yet after living out of that suitcase since june 19th, I was so ridiculously ready to actually live somewhere that my things practically unpacked themselves. Of course, I'm anal-retentive enough that I hanged my clothes (that sentence is grammatically correct, I love it!), I arranged all of my books, and I even organized my drawer full of small things that didn't really find a home anywhere else more practical. I call that the "junk drawer."
I eventually fell asleep and slept like a baby. When the morning light woke me up, I finally got to see how absolutely gorgeous this campus is, and I immediately felt better. I met two other foreign teachers: George and Lionel. George is maybe 55 years old, he's pretty quiet, but he's also really amiable. He's an American ex-military man from Indiana. Lionel is great! He's talkative, he has a lot of energy, and he lives life with a lot of vigor. He's about 45 years old and he's South African. I didn't meet any other foreign teachers for the next 3 days.
Lionel took me downtown my first morning and showed me around to the major stores. There's a very large indoor shopping mall where I finally bought a cell phone. In the U.S., I never got one and I never wanted to - it took moving to China for me to finally see the practicality of owning a mobile. Here, I'll definitely need one because the phone in my room is confusing, strange, and I'm I'm not actually sure that it works. If I knew my number, I could call myself - but I don't. Anyway, we had dumplings, we looked through a rip-off DVD store, I bought some huge computer speakers, and we went shopping at the big Arty Mart. It basically carries anything you could ever want while furnishing a new apartment.
My "big ticket" items so far include a rice cooker, my cell phone, my computer speakers, an iron, a reading lamp, lots of glassware, kitchen supplies, dishes, and even a nice pot and pan. I've been cooking for myself a lot and I love it! I really missed cooking. I only wish I could find some spices that I like cooking with: basil, paprika, oregano, thyme, turmeric - I miss them all! But on the other hand, I have all the fresh ginger root, rice vinegar, and soy sauce that I could ever want. It's a fair trade off, I think!
Soon, I met some of the other foreign teachers. I think we're going to get along famously! I'm more excited now for this upcoming semester than I ever was before I moved here - my reservations about not knowing quite what to expect are finally gone because I now have my apartment, some friends, and a few bus routes figured out. My only uneasiness now is for the upcoming courses that I'll be teaching - I have no idea what they'll be, when they'll be, or who I'll be teaching. I'm sure I'll find that all out soon enough!
The other foreign English teachers are as follows: Olivia, a 27 year old girl from L.A. who's very spunky, laid back, but also likes to party quite a bit. I'm glad to see the other foreigners won't be living like Quakers, because I definitely plan on enjoying my time here! Then there's the three from Oregon - Justin, Kellen, and Liz. Justin reminds me exactly like my best friends from home and I think we'll get along great. Kellen reminds me a lot of my favorite cousin, Dustin, so I'm also sure that he and I will get along. Liz is a very interesting person. I think she'll be great to have long conversations with, I just hope that she's not so shy that she'll be offended or scared if I'm in the mood to debate with her about things - she's definitely well-read and intelligent enough to change (or at least better inform) my opinions about things as long as she'll put up with me being a hot-headed egoist. (Did I mention that I'm a hot-headed egoist?)
There are Christy and Evan. I stalked out Christy on facebook before I came, but I don't think she ever added me as her online friend. Well, now she has to be my friend, because I think her boyfriend Evan is awesome! He reminds me of me... refer to the above paragraph - egoists love people who remind them of themselves. :)
There's an older woman from Washington D.C. Her name is Margaret and she's too shy to begin a conversation. I'm intrigued to find out what brings her to China. Supposedly, there are 7 Germans (5 girls, 2 boys) moving in downstairs very soon. They'll be here to teach (what else?) German. There are also 3 older Japanese men here to teach Japanese.
There's a small campus grocery store nearby with all the food and hygiene necessities to keep a campus happy. Just outside the side gate to campus, there's a huge street market full of food vendors. There are also a lot of restaurants and a few small bars. We've already been to one fo the bars, Lava, 3 times. The owner speaks fluent English and loves hanging out with us. Last night, he gave us a free bottle of French wine just to thank us for coming in. Since school hasn't started yet, the place is really empty. They have gin, they have tonic, and for just 15 kuai, they'll put those two together for me! Needless to say, there goes my salary! :)
Ok, it's almost midnight and I'm exhausted. More about Zhenjiang will follow as I think of more things to write.
Living in Nanjing with a Chinese Family - Friday August 24th, 2007
After saying goodbye to Kirsten in Shanghai, I went to the train station and got on a train bound for Nanjing. The train was a bullet train, and the trip only took about 2 hours. That includes stops in a lot of cities on the way: Suzhou, Wuxi, Chanzhou, and Zhenjiang! Yes, Zhenjiang, the city that I'm moving to tomorrow. At first, the scenery from the train was all like Shanghai - green, flat, without many trees. Soon, a few hills popped up, a million trees sprouted, and just when the landscape was looking absolutely gorgeous outside my train window, we hit the Zhenjiang train station. I was so excited! My city has mountains (at least tall hills, by my Colorado standards), it's green, there are trees everywhere, and it's beautiful. I only got to see it from the train, but I'm excited to go back tomorrow and actually move in.
Well, I got to Nanjing, took a taxi with Echo to a central location, and my homestay family's friend came to pick me up. We spoke Chinese all the way to my homestay family's house, and then we all went out for a big lunch.
The family is great! They're amazing people and I can't believe how patient and hospitable they are. That being said, I'm definitely experiencing some culture shock at some of the differences in living that I didn't read about in any of my research about China.
First, the good things. The mom is an amazing cook and she makes a delicious hand-made lunch and dinner for me everyday. For breakfast, she gives me bread, warm mayonnaise, milk, and really terrible coffee. She thinks that in order to make good instant coffee, you need to use a lot of instant coffee. A lot! It's basically like a cup of instant coffee with a few tablespoons of water added. If I weren't so starved for coffee, I wouldn't be able to handle the bitterness. But as it turns out, my coffee addiction needs an outlet and her terrible, bitter instant coffee satisfies my craving, so I grin and bear it.
Her lunches and dinners begin with either a bowl of noodles or a bowl of steamed rice. Then she puts out between 3 and 6 different dishes. She makes garlic and green beans (delicious), cucumber salad (pretty good), kung pao pork (delicious), something with squash and zuchini (delicious), duck (delicious, except it still has a head attached), and different variations of what I have come to call "seaweed soup". Mmm, seaweed!
The son of the family taught me a lot about social issues in China about which I had previously read. Yes, the one-child policy is resulting in an entire generation of male, spoiled children. Yes, China's education system is a rough copy of the American system only with the emphasis refocused from individuality to conformity. The poor students seriously spend 12 hours each day at school, they return home for dinner, then they begin their 3-5 hours of homework. They work incredibly hard and, from what I experienced, they're not excelling at subjects like you might expect. One 14 year old boy needed help with his math homework - 14 years old, and he was learning geometry. I learned geometry my freshman year of high school, which is when I was 13. I could understand working your children incredibly hard if they were progressing twice as fast as students in other countries, but when the results are the same, then why expel so much more effort? (Obviously, this is just one example and it's unfair for me to make general assumptions about the success of the Chinese educational system after only tutoring one student in geometry.)
Mostly, I was confined to the house. For a few meals, we went to dinner at restaurants and enjoyed the lively atmosphere of Nanjing at night. Nanjing at night is beautiful. I love Nanjing! We visited a Hunan Lu for a delicious meal and we did a lot of shopping. Other outings included a trip to Zhongshan Park (loved it!), a trip to the Olympic training center which included a ride up a Space-Needle-esque tower in which I could see the entire city, and a visit to Xin Hua Bookstore where I purchased Ana Karenina by Tolstoy and The Idiot by Dostoyevski. I love Russian Literature!
Ok, anyway, the things that drove me crazy: eating etiquette. Everyone ate with their mouth open, smacked their food, touched my food with their hands, slurped their soup, slurped their rice, and repeatedly tried to give me a spoon to eat with despite the fact that I was eating circles around them with my chopsticks. (Seriously, I was more nimble with chopsticks than anyone in the family. I dropped less food and could easily pick up more of it, and yet they relentlessly tried to put a spoon in my hand the entire time.) They also piled food on my bowl so fast that I never had a chance to keep up with the eating. At one point, the mom was scooping food into my already-full bowl so quickly that it spilled out of the bowl, onto the table, and then onto my lap. It took every ounce of patience for me to not scream at her to stop touching my food and back off for 3 seconds while I took a bite.
I'm not ungrateful for their hospitality and I appreciate their vigor to share their culture with me. But the vigor was too vigorous, and I begin to lose patience when I'm starving, I want to eat, but I'm too busy cleaning food off my lap and too busy explaining why I don't need a spoon to eat just because I'm from a different culture.
Anyway, the second major shock I experienced was a complete lack of privacy. When the dad came home from work, he would strip to his boxers and hang out. The boy I was tutoring would lay around in his tighty-whitey underwear while I was trying to teach. The mom would use the bathroom and leave the door open! A door existed, and yet she wouldn't shut it when she went into the bathroom. I don't think it even occurred to them that I might not be accustomed to strangers using the bathroom in front of me.
Equally, when I closed a door it provided no extra privacy for me. All it granted was a split-second warning that someone was entering the room. The son entered the bathroom once when I was sitting on the toilet, and he didn't even act embarassed on seeing me there. My bedroom was grand central station as they walked in individually to wish me a good night. Even when I was sleeping, they would enter the room as they pleased, make as much noise as they needed to accomplish whatever task brought them to my room, and then leave again.
Once again, I'm not trying to say that these are aspects of their culture that need changed. I don't believe that at all! I'm happy that my family was so comfortable around me that they were able to let me glimpse these parts of Chinese culture that I otherwise would have completely missed. But I now better understand the term "culture shock," because when each of these things happened, I was definitely completely shocked.
Anyway, I got a phone call on Friday afternoon that I was headed to Zhenjiang one day early, so in total, I spent 10 days with my homestay family. I somehow maintained my patience and they (equally impressively, no doubt!) somehow maintained theirs, and I made the hour-long drive to the Jiangsu University campus in Zhenjiang with Echo and Leo.
Shanghai with Kirsten for 2 Weeks - Sunday August 19th, 2007
Also, a lot of pictures - on a public facebook album! I'll move them to Picasa when I get the time:
Pictures of Shanghai and Kirsten - Part One
Pictures of Shanghai and Kirsten - Part Two
Between spending time with Kirsten in Shanghai, moving to Nanjing, and settling in with my home-stay family, I've had almost NO time for updating my site. Oops! The good news is that in a week, I'll be at my new apartment with my own computer and I'll update whenever I want. The bad news is that ... well, there is no bad news! I got to spend 2 weeks in Shanghai with the girl I love, I moved to my favorite city in China, Nanjing, and I'm basically just spending time tutoring some English, playing games, watching movies, and screwing around with a family who doesn't speak English.
I want to recap my entire stay in Shanghai with Kirsten, day by day.
Thursday, August 2nd - She flew into the Shanghai Pudong International airport and I took the MagLev train out to pick her up. She was delayed and we therefore couldn't take the MagLev back - luckily we found a bus that went towards the metro we needed, we took the metro to the closest stop that we could, and we took a taxi for the remainder. On her first night in Shanghai, Kirsten got to ride every imaginable form of Shanghai transportation.
In the airport, we did the huge hug / big kiss combo that you usually only see in movies. I had never done one of those before. On the bus to the metro, I kept looking over in disbelief... she was so much a part of my life back home in Fort Collins, and now she was making a cameo appearance in my new life here in China! It was surreal, but awesome.
Friday, August 3rd - Our first day together in Shanghai was mostly uneventful. We went to the grocery store because I wanted to show her how cool they are - something about Chinese grocery stores that I love! We looked at the live turtles, eels, clams, frogs, etc. We bought some breakfast foods so we could just eat in our room, and on the way home, we picked up some delicious buckets of noodles from a little shop on the street. (Not quite a street vendor - they had a physical store location and adhered to health regulations, supposedly.)
We heard from my two friends at the hostel, Hawk and Anna, that the Zhongshan Park stop on Line 3 had a huge shopping mall called Cloud 9, and that Cloud 8 and Cloud 7 were basically full of restaurants. We went there for some authentic Chinese food - and promptly ordered a pizza! :o) We also had some Chinese food, too, of course. We explored around the hostel area a little bit and went home early.
Saturday, August 4th - We set out to explore East Nanjing Road. Once we got down there, we (I) got lost. I went West, I needed to go East ... or vice versa. I'm still not sure what the hell happened. Anyway, we ended up close to where we wanted to buy our Beijing Opera theater tickets. We got our tickets on the center balcony and basically that's all we accomplished on Saturday. We went back to the hostel and went out for a big barbecue dinner. The restaurant just puts tons of food on skewers and you buy them one by one. We ate some great stuff - duck tongue, BBQ'ed bananas, funny balls of meat that I loved but had no idea what they were, crayfish, lamb, beef, chicken, pork, whole fish, etc. etc. Everything imaginable! We went back to the hostel for beer and foosball with my two friends from Korea that I met at the hostel a few days earlier, John and Chris.
Sunday, August 5th - We went to East Nanjing Road again, then we walked all the way down towards the Bund (after I walked us the WRONG direction across the entire strip mall, AGAIN.) We got the cheesy touristy pictures, many good views of the Bund and of the HuangPu river, and then we got some ice cold beer from a little grocery store and enjoyed it next to the river. We took the pedestrian ferry across the river. For 2 yuan, you can cross the HuangPu on the coolest little ferry! This was one of my favorite things in Shanghai. (Simple minds... simple pleasures?)
We had lunch at a small outside cafe that served really good noodles and dumplings. Sunday night, we went down to the "Bar Roads" for a good dinner. The food was amazing! We had some beef that was sooo tender... and some sweet and sour pork that was really good too. The service was bad and they didn't even bring us the rice we ordered - they didn't even seem to think it mattered, the waiter just said, "Well, then I won't charge you for it." Gee, thanks pal.
Monday, August 6th - We got up early to try and find Yu Garden. It didn't look too far on the map from the East Nanjing Road metro station. Well, it didn't look far because I forgot to check the distance scale - small map, huge city! We walked the entire way there through a lot of construction and traffic. It was hot and dirty. Long story short - we made it eventually and took a taxi back when we were through. At Yu Garden, we got fresh steamed dumplings. We took some pictures around the area and then we had tea in the fancy center tea house. We stayed there for awhile, went back to the hostel to get cleaned up / dressed up for the opera, and then we went out to find a good dinner.
We found a vegetarian restaurant up a shady elevator on the 8th floor of a building on East Nanjing Road. We were the only customers there, and people were really excited to see us! The food was absolutely amazing. We ordered 4 different dishes, like pineapple potato salad, vegetarian meat in sweet and sour sauce, and vegetarian prawns. They remembered to bring our rice out. Basically, it was fast, delicious, and I loved it.
The Chinese Opera was interesting - and nearly 2 and a half hours long! For the first 20 minutes, I was really excited ... "Wow, they're singing in Chinese! Look at those beautiful costumes! How funny!" Soon, I was completely lost to the plot, couldn't really understand a word, and I realized they were singing in Shanghai-ese, not Mandarin. All of the shi's were zi's, etc. Anyway, I stayed for the duration and gave Kirsten a cat nap on my shoulder. Not a bad time!
We decided to go out after the opera. We went to a small bar over on Bar Street (I forgot its name!) and stayed for about 20 minutes. The drinks were unbelievably expensive, the atmosphere was boring, and my gin and tonic tasted like a drop of gin, a cup of soda water, and a lemon. I'm not sure how I can better compose that sentence to reflect my disgust. I was angry, that's probably enough said. We went back home.
Tuesday, August 7th - We got up, took two metros, found a taxi, and got promptly driven right back in the direction of our hostel while we tried to find the Jade Buddha. It turns out we did a giant loop and we were staying really close to it in the first place! The Jade Buddha area was touristy (well, everything in Shanghai reeks of tourist, but this was more so.) and we were frustrated with the random tour groups and the different admission prices - you pay to get into the temple, THEN you pay to see the Jade Buddha. Anyway, when I finally got to the Jade Buddha, it was all worth it! The Buddha was absolutely beautiful.
We had a funny Chinese fast food lunch at the central train station on our way back to our hostel. We went North to buy tickets for the ERA show at the Shanghai Circus World, then we went back to the hostel and went out for dinner with Hawk and Anna. We had famous Shanghai chicken. (Just a side note - don't believe anybody when they say "This is the famous something of someplace" ... Chinese people say that for everything! Every single city has served me the exact same dishes and claimed they were "unique" to this city, and it's what this city is known for, etc. etc. If they are truly famous dishes, you will have heard of them, like Peking Duck and the soft-shell crabs.) We went to the grocery store and went back home early.
Wednesday, August 8th - We went back to the BBQ skewer restaurant for lunch and promptly ordered way too much food. I can't eat a meal in China without ordering about twice the amount of food I actually need. Good thing food is cheap here, or I'd be broke! We went shopping around our hostel area and bought matching shirts. Right now in China, the fashion for couples is to wear matching shirts! We found some cute ones - a boy telephoning a girl on a paper-cup-and-string phone, sending a heart through the string (they didn't have it in any color but pink! We didn't get it.) and one with two little pigs. Kirsten has a shirt with a little girl pig saying, "Little Pig, today you look so cool!" and my shirt has the boy pig saying, "... I just look so-so today."
We used the internet cafe for awhile because I desperately needed to make my arrangements for my trip after Shanghai, and then we went downtown for our river boat tour of the HuangPu. The boat we got on was a huge dragon boat - it was really cool except that there were about 8 million people crammed onto the boat. The boat left at 8:30, so we got to see the skyline and the Bund at night as we rode up and back along the river - it was a really gorgeous place! After the boat tour, we stopped for a few bottles of cold beer to enjoy next to the river. As we were walking along, Kirsten dropped her's and it shattered! She was so embarassed that she just kept walking. We got up next to the river and, wouldn't you know, she spilled my beer too! So the beer idea went out the window and we decided to just head home.
Thursday, August 9th - We had planned to go to Suzhou, but we were tired and the weather was really bad, so we postponed that until Saturday. We just went out to the Cloud 9 shopping mall to look around and to have lunch. Then we went home and went to the "Be For Time Tea House," a cool little place where you pay 18yuan / person and you can hang out and drink as many cups of tea, coffee, and strange beverage concoction as you want. It was really good, and we just chilled out and played cards. Thursday night, we had some drinks in the room from the bottle of imported gin I bought at Carrefour.
Friday, August 10th - This was one of our best days in Shanghai. We began by going to Papa John's for lunch downtown near Century Ave. That might be the last pizza I have for a long time. After lunch, we went out to Century Park, the biggest park in Shanghai. This place is beautiful! There is a giant lake and a small, winding river. There are millions of trees, miles on miles of walking paths, you can rent tandem bicycles (and other strange human-powered vehicles), and there are even paddle boats on the lake and river. I wanted to boat, but when we got there, it was cordoned off so you could only boat about 100 yards down the river. Anyway, we spent the afternoon walking around the huge park, enjoying nature, trees, and each other's company. It was a gorgeous day!
Friday evening, we went to the Shanghai Circus World for the ERA show. We didn't have time for dinner, so we hit up a small grocery store across the street from the Circus World and bought bread and some funny rolls. We ate at a small park on the corner. The circus show was amazing - it wasn't the usual type of circus (thank god) and most of the feats were acrobatic! My favorite skit involved a man, a woman, and a big piece of silk hanging from the ceiling. He grabbed onto the silk, started running in a circle, she grabbed onto him, and then the silk started going up. They were hanging 30 feet from the ground (maybe more?) in the air and he was just grabbing the sheet with his hand. At one point, she was balanced with her chin on his foot, and nothing else! It was amazing to see. After the circus, we went to this little dark restaurant for a real dinner.
Saturday, August 11th - Everybody we met told us, "You must see Suzhou! You can't miss Suzhou! Suzhou Suzhou Suzhou!" Etc. Well, Saturday morning, we got up and hopped a train for Suzhou. We got there, got mobbed by taxi drivers, peddlers, and rickshaw operators as soon as we stepped off the train, selected one rickshaw guy to drive us to some garden (they're all the same), and escaped the mob scene.
The Suzhou garden was nice. It wasn't nearly as big or beautiful as Century Park, and the entrance fee was about 10 times more expensive. There wasn't much to do except walk in, admire the scenery (and it was pretty, but certainly not world-famous pretty), and then we took a little boat back towards the entrance. All in all, I was not very impressed with the garden. Suzhou is famous for having about 50 more identical gardens scattered about, but as far as I'm concerned, if you've seen one touristy, over-priced, too-small, Chinese garden, you've seen them all!
We hopped in a taxi and had him drive us to a shopping area. This area was pretty cool - definitely not unique to Suzhou, but cool nonetheless. We did a little shopping, had some dumplings, and soon we were done with Suzhou. When people travel in China, there's a mistaken stereotype that they want to see the most gaudy, touristy areas that exist. Anywhere that charges more than 3 times what they should for admittance is deemed "great," because why else would they charge so much? The best areas, like Century Park in Shanghai and Zhongshan Park in Nanjing, are always free, not crowded, and absolutely gorgeous. In other words, that's the last time I take someone's advice on something that I "must see," because the "must see" locations in China answer to a different set of standards than those I hold them to.
We were tired. We hopped a train to Shanghai after a big scare in the train station - it sounded like all the train tickets to Shanghai were sold out! I swear, everybody in front of us tried to buy Shanghai train tickets and got turned away, but when we reached the window, we didn't have a single problem. Strange! Well, we made it to a train, made it back to Shanghai, and got back to our hostel. We got cleaned up and just ate dinner in the hostel bar. We were both exhausted and slightly dispirited with our Suzhou adventure, and we fell asleep early.
Sunday, August 12th - Shopping! And lots of it. We started in the Yu Garden area. We waited in line for fresh dumplings for 1 hour. They were really good ... but an hour-long-queue-good? I don't know. We shopped and shopped. Then we went to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum subway stop. Inside of the stop is an entire underground shopping mall! They have all the awesome, stolen products from designer factories in China. Lacoste shirts for 40 yuan ($5), Prada bags, Dockers pants, iPods, computer software, video game systems... you name it! Wow. I was amazed. For the price of ONE Lacoste shirt in the U.S., I could have purchased 15 in this underground shop. And of course, prices are fluid. When someone tells you a price, you can laugh and act insulted, start to leave, and see what they'll drop down to.
"Zenme gui! Tai gui, tai gui. Wo bu yao."
"Wait wait wait! What is your best price?"
"20 yuan."
"Oh, no, stop joking with me!"
"I'm not joking, what you told me, that was the joke!"
etc. etc.
It's exhausting, but fun! And you can get some really good prices on stuff. Anyway, it was a cool afternoon. I liked seeing all these expensive products for so cheap. I want to visit that place again before I return home to stock up on good shirts and some other designer stuff.
Sunday night, we ate at the vegetarian restaurant on East Nanjing Road again. This time was even more delicious than the first time, and I loved it.
Monday, August 13th - We spent Monday morning packing our suitcases. Monday afternoon, Kirsten's Dad (the pilot) was in town on a layover, and he took us shopping at some HongGong City (bad translation perhaps? Hard to find, but it's on West Nanjing Road), and then he took us to a Japanese Tepenyaki restaurant for dinner. This food was absolutely amazing. For 150yuan / person, you get all you can eat and drink. I wish I had been there on my own terms so I could have fully appreciated that "all you can drink" part! (haha) But the food was amazing and I had a good time. Kirsten and I parted from her Dad and went back home to finish packing and spend our last evening together for a looong time (at least for 4 months).
Tuesday, August 14th - We woke up early and I walked Kirsten down to the metro station for our goodbyes. She was meeting her Dad at his hotel to go to the airport and I was meeting Echo in the railway station to take a train to Nanjing. The metro sign said 5 minutes until the next train. I cried a little, we hugged a little, and then she hopped on a train and I saw her disappear as it drove away. Why is this so sad to me?! Maybe I just think trains are romantic because in the movies, people are always telling lovers goodbye at trainstops. Maybe it's because the train is leaving at a certain time and you know exactly how long you have left together. I'm not sure why - but I think train stations are both romantic and really sad. Well, this metro station is just a more modern train station, and I was actually kind of happy to experience telling a loved one goodbye at a train station, as cheesy as that sounds. So I'm cheesy... and a romantic... who knew?
AND that is my stay in Shanghai in a nutshell. A lot more happened than I can possibly write, especially in the amount of time I have! But there's the schedule and a rough outline of the things we did and enjoyed in Shanghai together, and now I can finally begin updating my blog with stories from Nanjing. In 24 hours, I'm moving to Zhenjiang to my own apartment! And that excitement is the reason I got up this morning.