上海人 (Shanghai person)

Hi guys,

I live in Shanghai now.


We got an apartment and have spent a week there. We had to buy sheets and blankets and everything, but we haven't gotten plates and kitchen stuff yet. I forget how much stuff I just took from home when I moved out! It's Chinese New Year, so we're going to have a little time off work, but the stores are PACKED, so it's not a good time for shopping. We spent an hour in line at the grocery store (more like a supertarget) trying to buy laundry soap and a pad for the bed (you could count the springs before, I swear, but at least it HAD a mattress.)

The apartment is a 10mn walk to the subway station (Jing An Temple) in the Jing An district, right in the middle of town. The streets are lively with a zillion little shops everywhere and people walking around. I'm still trying to figure out the wireless internet. I can never find the place to put in the new internet username and password when I move.

I trained at the central office/school for a week with Nick and two Britons, and then started at my own school, which is a bit bigger than Nick's. I'll be tipping the scales here toward the American side of things and there are three other Americans (but no other foreign girls). It was lovely to start teaching actual students again after all that training, but the training WAS good; I was prepared when I got in there, even though it's a different way of doing things.

We tried to watch a movie last night, but it turns out that the "DVD Player" in the living room is just a cable box. Drat. We watched Be Kind Rewind on my computer instead and then went out and looked at fireworks.

We're going to walk to our schools now (we work at two different centers and we've been taking the subway), as there's not much else to do. You can't clean the house today because you'll sweep out the good luck with the bad. All the stores are closed (probably, but I'll bring the shopping bag and the list anyway). You can't get a haircut (we did that a few days ago) and you're not even supposed to wash your hair (which I forgot and did anyway).

It's pretty cold here, so I don't even want to go out, but what are you gonna do? They say it's colder outside in ShanDong province, where I lived last year, but colder inside in Shanghai. What I hear is that South of the Yangze river (which dips north to include us) you aren't allowed to have radiators, or something. I know the heating is centralized and you pay the government for it and they decide when to turn it on (November 15th in both BeiJing and ShanDong). The little cheap restaurants we go to don't have the heat on and the air conditioner in the living room seems to only make things colder. A space heater is on the list.

Okay, gotta go. Xin nian kuai le!