Team AC On The Go: News from the Shang

Anyone who has traveled a lot, knows that things abroad are rarely done as they are done at home; usually they are extremely different, and this usually produces countless entertaining stories. Take yesterday for example. I desperately needed to mail a letter back to Vancouver, as I had forgotten to leave the mail key for our tenants. So just as I would do at home, I bought an envelope, addressed it, put the key and the note inside… and then the games began! First, I noticed there was no lick-and-stick thingy to close the envelope, so I found a stapler at school and closed the envelope with about ten staples to ensure that the key wouldn’t fall out en route to Canada. After struggling to find the post office here in Shanghai, I bought the necessary three stamps I needed to mail the letter. Guess what? No lick-and-stick backing to the stamps either. Rather, I was directed to a corner of the post office where a massive bowl of runny liquid glue and a paintbrush were set up. Awkwardly I painted the backs of the stamps and glued them to the envelope, and of course got glue everywhere. I then handed the envelope back to the girl behind the counter, who indicated to me that all the staples needed to be removed before mailing it. But guess what? No little staple remover claws like we have back at home. So I was left to extract ten tight little staples out of the wet, glue-covered envelope. All the while, a pack of annoying little fruit flies buzzed around my face, making the task that much more frustrating. Eight staples later, with my fingers nearly bleeding, I gave up and handed the envelope back to the girl, showing that there was NO WAY I was going to get the last two staples out of the envelope. She proceeded to hand my envelope to a male co-worker who managed to finangle the last two staples out of the envelope, all the while glaring at me. Once the envelope had nearly dried I was finally able to put it into the mail box. I sincerely hope that it arrives in Canada, and does not affix itself to another piece of mail (it being so sticky) and wind up in some other foreign nation.

After not even a week of living here in Shanghai, I feel like I could already write a book and post a thousand pictures about this experience. However, I know how it is when you read blogs or emails of people who are traveling and they feel they just have to include every sordid detail, like the weather, what food they’ve eaten, a minute-by-minute account of each day, etc. Over the course of writing this blog, I will definitely aim NOT to do these things, b/c I know it’s boring and annoying to read. However, that being said, I must share that I’ve just had my first crazy Chinese lunch of “steamed lotus flower fruit”. Andrew and I have managed to get ourselves on the school’s lunch plan as there is no cafeteria here. This means that all the kids get their lunch “catered” to them in their classroom each day. The meals look like little airplane meals and consist of a lot of rice, some meat, and some vegetables. There is no vegetarian option available, so lucky Andrew gets a double portion of meat (mine)! Andrew and I go sit in our office and the classroom monitor comes and serves us our little red boxed airplane meal, which we proceed to eat with chopsticks (sorry, no forks and knives here!). And the cost of all this finery you ask? The equivalent of $1 a day. Cheap is good!

"The Lunch"

More details: Our accommodations are nice. We live in an apartment about a 15-minute walk from the school, on the 9th floor of a 24-story building with a great view of lots of other buildings and skyscrapers. It’s a 2-bedroom place, but we’ve turned the smaller bedroom into our office. Although they promised us a “fully-furnished” place, we found the kitchen to be quite lacking, with only 2 forks and spoons, a wok, and a couple random plates and bowls. Also, the mattress of our bed was hard as a rock, which is apparently quite normal here in China. A trip to Ikea was clearly in order, so that’s what we did on the weekend, getting our place as set up as we could, without going overboard (b/c we only intend to live here for a year, two tops). Also, the place was definitely NOT left as clean as we’d like, which totally sketched me out (I like to live in cleanliness and don’t love piles of dust and Asian hair bits underfoot!). So after Lysoling the entire place, I’m feeling much more at home! One handy feature in our place is a massive flat-screen TV. We don’t have a TV at home in Vancouver so it’s a bit weird, but I’m kind of happy to have it there so I can do my exercise DVDs on it. (I bought Hip Hop Abs off the internet before we left Canada which is great so far). I haven’t attempted to run here in Shanghai yet, and I don’t think I will as the streets are SO busy, traffic-filled, and dangerous!! A walk symbol at any given crosswalk means very little; people turn left and right whenever they please, and at break-neck speeds. Also, there are TONS of bikes and scooters that don’t pay any attention to traffic lights, etc, so you’ve got to watch it!! This morning on our walk to school we saw a taxi hit a guy on a bike… the man fell over and starting yelling insanely at the taxi driver. The taxi driver- can you believe this?- just grinned and waved at the guy he’d just hit!! UNREAL!! The even crazier thing is that NONE of the bike or scooter riders wear helmets- it’s like they’ve not yet been invented in China (although they’re probably made in some factory here and shipped to North America!). So all in all, you’ve really got to pay attention when walking anywhere. Running doesn’t seem like an option b/c of the traffic danger, and b/c of the fact that I’d have to stop at each and every block to wait for the traffic.

There is SO much to tell that I think I’m going to have to break it up into a few blog entries so it doesn’t get too long. Till next time… dsai-jian