Way back when! as in 5ish weeks ago

So earlier in our time in Shanghai we were still discovering local shops and finding some of our favourite places to eat and buy our groceries!

Lining up for some supposedly amazing buns 

They turned out to be just ok :P It's very popular among the local people though!

Busy North Gate Halal restaurant 

Butter Milk Cookies!!

  Fruit vendors casually betting money on card games whilst we peruse the fruits and veg, gotta love the casualness! 

During our first few outing we also learnt when its best not to travel around the city via metro. Because travelling during peak hour meant we had to deal with this:

Peak hour in Sydney is looking a lot more comfortable aye?

Also....went to Xintiandi! It has lovely old school English architecture. Very touristy.

China family taking pictures amongst it!

 And went to the Rockbund Art museum :)

 

A use for old heaters!

Grains of rice with tiny Hindi Script on it

A lot has happened over the last few weeks, shall continue about it all in next post! I'll leave you with this: riding in Shanghai traffic is crazy, I don't know so many people do it on a daily basis. ><'

Dorm life! House Warming! ..and Class >>'

Hi !

So a big part of getting settled was home-ifying my room. Yes, you just read home-ifying. Luckily there was a Kmart type store nearby (RTmart) which had everything from food, to clothes hangers and toilet paper. Toilet paper was on the top of the list! Anyways...After a couple massive RTmart hauls of 100RMB each (about 20AUD), my dorm felt a lot more comfortable. Nesting! Gotta love it. Here are some before and after pics !

                                                                                 

There is a slight difference to one of my shelves, because now, it has more snacks! ^_^ hehe (If you're reading this Api and Apa, Sorry! I am buying more fruits too! Promise. Love you!)

My dorm!
Comfortable and Content - Allhumdulilah :)

6 of us Australian girls moved out into an apartment, a really nice one!! So of course when they got settled in they had to have a house warming party!! It was an epic night! Got to meet so many international students. Its amazing how people from around the world can end up in one place for a myriad of reasons. I made friends with people from Korea, Japan, America, Germany, France, Egypt, Syria, England, Italy, and I feel like there's more. Just can't remember. Here come some of the party pictures:

Group Shot ^_^

What Up!!

Some of the awesome Aussie girls!

Featuring new French and Korean friend

And then...there was class. Hmmm wasn't sure how I felt about class being 5 days a week, but it's only from 8-11:40am, so can't complain. I get the rest of the day to explore! More about the exploring in the next post, for now lettuce talk about class.

Erryday green tea.

So, they speak Chinese, the whole time. Makes sense, yes, because its a Mandarin speaking, listening and writing class; but the first couple days I was like: Woa...what is she talking about. But third week in now and I'm feeling a lot more confident. I'm nodding when the teacher is speaking, and I actually know what I'm nodding about. Always a good sign. Indeed. One of the teachers is so sweet too, she wanted to take a picture with our class, then she emailed us the picture!

Class B1 buddies!

Shall continue about life in China in the next post! Keep it real! :)

Recapping those early Shanghai days! ^_^

你们好!

When we got to Shanghai it was freezing, so of course we would need to go shopping to buy some warm clothes! You don't get 4 degree cold in Sydney. So did some shopping and what not. It was definitely a test of where my language skills were at. Let's just say, I needed some improvement. Nanjing Road was really amazing, so many stores, including ones which are yet to open in Australia. Though one thing I really needed to get used to was keeping my bag in front of me at all times, gotta watch out for pick pockets.

Nanjing Road at night

From Nanjing Road we walked to the Bund!! Pretty spectacular I must say! Tourist pictures for the win!

Just some of the cool people adventuring alongside me

And so much food. Planning on trying every restaurant on Yanchang Road (the road in front of Shanghai university) this year. This is a short clip of the food I had in just the first week...yuuuum.

Oh right, and the staring. I think its safe to say we all knew there was no I way going to blend in here. Let's use an analogy shall we. Hmm, brownie. Yes, I am the brownie among all the vanilla cakes. That'll do. Its getting late, can't think of anything better than that. And I love brownies and cakes :)

Basically, these stares I was receiving were not in any way subtle. It continued regardless of whether or not I made eye contact. At first I found it very off putting, but now I often stare back with a smile. This usually results in a returned smile, in which case I cheer a little on the inside. Otherwise there's just continued staring, with no change of expression...in these cases I look away...very awkward. Haha.

People here are really kind and friendly to me though! This statement reigns true when one overlooks the staring of course. But when I got to the point of conversing with the local people, they encouraged me to speak Chinese to them, and helped me to communicate better, gave directions etc. This compensates for the sometimes bothersome staring on a day to day basis.

Shall continue later! This time I'll leave you with a picture of a tree in the shape of a dome, how do they keep it like this? Daily hedge clipping maybe. Lol Hmm perhaps will talk about dorms, Chinese class and other endeavours in the next entry. Until next time! Keep it real! :)

Packing!! ...among other things lol

So much has happened since I created this blog, oh dear. Its been a month since I've been in China. But I can't bring myself to change the title of this post, so ima stick with it.

Better say something about the packing experience though, otherwise it would just be ridiculous, am I right? Ok so, packing was interesting, I felt as though I was going to open my own chemist here cause of all the "just in case" medicine I bought. Haha. But most of the other packing involved me saying "I'll just buy it in China, its probably cheaper there anyway." And let me tell you, it pretty much is.
Especially food! I can feed myself the three meals of the day for under $10AUD. And its a good feed, It'll be tasty and I'll full by the end of it. Mmmmmmmm. Ok, stop thinking about food.

Then, of course, after the packing, we had lift off!

Hmmm, I guess now I'll just talk about the most interesting interaction I've had with the local Shanghainese people since I've been here:

We were taking a stroll through RT mart (basically like Kmart but with groceries too!). As I perused the bath towels I caught three ladies looking and pointing at me from the corner of my eye. I glanced over at them, and saw them wearing hijabs (Muslim veils) on their heads and talking to each other about me; I gathered this with my great ability to understand body language, not quite there with the Mandarin.

I waved at them, and said "Ni hao," followed quickly with an "Asalamualaykum." They approached me, with big smiles on their faces. Wide-eyed and speaking fast they asked "Are you Muslim" in Chinese. I am sure they were already certain that I was, as I too was wearing the hijab and greeted them as any Muslim would. I replied with a confident "yes." We struck up a conversation, I contributed as much as I could with my minimal Chinese and nodded for the rest of the time. I explained to them that I was an international student from Australia and was very pleased to meet them as they were the first Muslim women I had seen. They were elated! And I realised that somewhere in the middle of the conversation, one of the ladies took my hand and held on to it for the rest of our encounter.

While I found it quite odd that a stranger grabbed my hand and held it, I felt "ok" with it at the same time, (because she didn't seem like a crazy person) and it had been a week into my time in Shanghai, and most of the local Chinese people just stared at me, literally until I was out of their line of vision;
Oh man, so much staring, I'll save that for another post, too funny. I'll leave you with a picture I took on my first night in Shanghai, in front of Shanghai University. Keep it real. :)