I guess I'm just an international bigmouth...

Wow...this week has flown by! It's hard to believe my time here is almost half over. On Monday, we didn't do much of anything...at least that I can remember. Tuesday, it was a fairly cool day, so we decided we had no excuse to sit around and we made the trek to visit the Jade Buddha Temple. It was very interesting and had many large Buddha statues made from various materials. Many people were going around, praying and offering money to Buddha. There was one temple in particular where there were coins all over the place. People left them on ledges, put them on the statues themselves, and put them into the container for coins. Many coins were also balanced on their side. I wasn't able to find anyone who could explain to me what this symbolized, but I thought it was quite interesting. The entire place smelled like incense...it was very calming. You could even watch some monks worshipping. I felt very odd here. I felt bad taking pictures of some things, because I wouldn't want people coming in and taking pictures of me during church...but this is a tourist attraction, so I'm sure they are used to it. Outside of the temple, I bought a Ni-Ni ceramic magnet. For those of you that don't know...for the Beijing Olympics, they have 5 bears to represent the 5 rings and I believe the 5 elements. One of them is called Ni-Ni...which is the nickname I self-proclaimed at the age of two (nee-nee...but close enough and pronounced the same). Shanna and mom brought me back a stuffed animal Ni-Ni. And I also bought earrings with a light green jade and a purplish-black pearl. Then we headed back to campus to teach our first class. (dang...I guess we do have to do SOME work...) Carlson usually teaches the class, but he was invited to Suzhou and made us teach. It went rather well...nothing too stressful.

Wednesday: We met up with Shanna's friend, Denise for lunch and a quick tour of her office. She is the head of Asia operations for Ashland Partners. They mostly do compliance work with GIPS (Global Investment Performace Standards) for companies from all over the world. She has been in charge of everything from setting up the office space to hiring and training employees to day-to-day management of operations. The office has grown to about 40 employees and they are looking to double that. They have a pretty posh office space in the Platinum Building in Xintiandi (the international part of town). She took us out to a delicious meal of Shanghai's specialty: a small steamed bun with different fillings and hot broth inside. It was fantastic. Afterwards, she had to get back to work. We told her that we were doing pretty well with the Chinese food, but we were both craving cheese. She pointed us in the direction of an import grocery store. When we entered, it was like the gates of heaven opened before us. They had such wonderful things as a whole aisle of cereal and a spread of different cheeses. A box of Golden Grahams will set you back close to $10. We bought a brick of anchor cheddar cheese and some sort of cracker. Not quite as good as a normal Club cracker, but it fit the bill. We decided that will we be going back and buying a larger chunk of cheese soon... Wednesday evening, we held office hours for any students who had questions or needed help. Only one guy showed up, so we helped him and chatted for a while...but mostly we bummed around on the internet.

Thursday morning we had class from 8am-11:40. Afterwards, we had lunch with Tracy, her roommate Katrina (?...I think that was her name), and Harry. They took us to the newest cafeteria on campus. Elizabeth and I immediately decided it was much better than the cafeteria we had been going to...the food at this one was actually warm and appetizing. I had some sort of flour noodle dish with bean sprouts, lettuce, and mystery meat. I'm guessing pork with lots of salt on it. It was very good. The helping was about twice as much as I could eat and cost me under 50 cents. During lunch, we were chatting with the students. I asked the girls if they had boyfriends and Tracy laughed and blushed. She is dating Victor, who we talk with often during class and he was the one who bought us the tickets to the dance show last Wednesday. We thought they were a very cute couple and teased her mercilessly. After lunch, they had to go back to class, so we did some exploring until it was time for the night class. In class, Victor usually sits with Harry, but that night, he was sitting with Tracy so Harry came over and sat with us. During the first break, Victor came over and we gave him crap about holding back on us. He laughed, then called us "international bigmouths" and walked away. We all had a good laugh about that. Thursday night, we met Denise downtown for a drink. She had a friend singing in a bar. It was called 'Visus'...and let me tell you...it's not the type of bar that you will find in Grand Forks! It was very classy and elegant. We told Denise this and she just laughed. She said if we thought this was nice, we should see some of the other bars around Shanghai! Her friend had an amazing voice. She used to sing in Las Vegas and then got the chance to come to Shanghai. We stayed there for a while, then Denise took us across the street to a different bar. It had a lot more people and a lot more foreigners. She took off because she had to work the next day. Elizabeth and I hung out there for a bit then headed home.

Friday morning, we had class from 10am-noon. Half the class was taught by Carlson and the other half was taught by the graduate assistant, so it was all in Chinese. Elizabeth did her sudoku while I sat and read a book. We went to the office after class, got a quick bite to eat, then went back to class. They had their first test, so we had to proctor it and make sure no one was cheating. It was probably the most boring 2 hours ever. Oh well...at least it was easy. The students thought the test was pretty hard, so we will see how they do. Hopefully they will catch on. During the test, I counted the number of students...61. In an itty bitty classroom. I am so uncomfortable at their tables. My legs are not made to fit under them! I have to turn to the side most of the time to sit comfortably. After that, Carlson, Elizabeth, and I went downtown to meet with Carlson's friend Catherine and her dad. We also met up with Mary Loyland who is another one of my accounting teachers at UND who is here for a couple weeks. Catherine's dad collects jewelry and hopes to open a store soon. He gave us great deals on many pieces...pretty much wholesale price. I got a strand of white pearls that would normally sell for over $100 for about $25. After that, we bummed around Nanjing Road for a while and headed out.

Saturday: We had nothing to do that morning, so no alarm clock! Woohoo! I only slept in until about 10:20... We got up, went to the office for a bit, and had lunch at the restaurant outside campus that we really like. After that, we went exploring for a bit. There's not really a whole lot to do around where we live, we usually have to go downtown to do anything. I bought some cherries from a little stand and we went back home. We met Victor and Tracy at the gates at 6pm. We took a cab to a part of town we hadn't been to yet. They took us to eat at this great Japanese style restaurant where you sit on stools around the grill and watch them cook your food. It was fun to watch and the food was amazing. We had sirloin steak, a t-bone (which absolutely melted in your mouth and the seasoning was to die for!!), prawns, octopus, and some really good cabbage. Elizabeth and I both tried a piece of the octopus. It took me a while to work up the courage though...the suckers just weirded me out. I like breaded calamari where you don't have to see that. I wasn't too crazy about this though. It had a very spicy seasoning on it and was quite chewy. I don't like really chewy things. Not terrible though. I was quite surprised that Elizabeth tried it without much coaxing from me! After the meal, we saw Spiderman 3. It was in English with Chinese subtitles. The special effects were pretty cool, but the movie was pretty cheesy. There is one part where Toby Maguire is strutting down the street...Elizabeth and I were dying we were laughing so hard! After the movie, Victor said that must have been Western humor because they didn't think it was that funny...so of course we laughed even harder. Then we walked over to a KTV place. KTV is very popular over here. You can rent a room with a karoke machine in it and go nuts. It was so much fun. Elizabeth and I sang such hits as: Dancing Queen, Hopelessly Devoted to You, Save Tonight, If You Want to Be Happy (just for Dad!), Heartbreaker, Oh-Bla-Di, and many others. At about 12:50am...Victor and Tracy were tired, but Elizabeth and I had our second wind. Tracy requested we do Dancing Queen one more time then hit the road. We laughed at them and said they'd never make it in the US if they were calling it quits this early! Elizabeth and I took a taxi back, Victor headed to his uncle's and Tracy was going to her parents. On the whole cab ride back, Elizabeth and I were wound up and talking. We were still talking and singing walking back to the hotel...and kept talking and singing in our room...until about 3:30am when we decided we should probably go to bed. We are going to have to do some KTV again!

That brings us to today. We got up and met with Carlson and one of his friends and went to Yu Gardens to do a bit of shopping. After we had spent too much money, we walked over to Nanjing and decided to have lunch at Pizza Hut. We were having cheese withdrawals. I still refuse to go to a McDonalds. It was delicious! After lunch, we found a book store where I picked up a couple books for Shanna's roommate's little boy Ben. We all walked back to the Bund and hung out there for a while then went home. We had a lazy afternoon, then came to the office. I talked with Mom briefly over MSN, but it was a poor connection today.

We have a busy week ahead, so I don't know when my next post will be. We have a meeting with a Manager from Deloitte, Wednesday we are going with the other UND students to Suzhou, and Friday we will leave for Beijing, getting back on Tuesday or so. I can't wait to see the Great Wall!!!