Thanksgiving

Being away from home on the holidays is a bit difficult. Even though people here are really nice, there is something about friends and family from home that share a common background that just can’t be replaced. As I expected, I hit the point where the novelty of living abroad has worn off. It has been feeling a bit daunting having to completely start from scratch socially. To make matters worse, even though I know Thanksgiving is an American holiday and I shouldn't expect a day off or anything, I was a little upset my school scheduled parent observations on Thanksgiving.

Fortunately, Danny and I were still able to have a very festive holiday dinner, two in fact. On Thanksgiving night the vegetarian dining club had a dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Anna Maya Cafe. The dishes were pretty unique. We had plum liquor, sauteed dates with tofu cream cheese, lots of appetizers like dumplings and veggie sushi, pumpkin soup, salad, mushroom 'meat' loaf and a dessert platter. It wasn't exactly a traditional Thanksgiving meal but the food was good and the company was pleasant.
































On Saturday my co-workers (mostly Alex) organized a Thanksgiving dinner. I made stuffed peppers and pecan pie. Neither of them came out as good as I had hoped though. The stuffed peppers were a bit bland and I burned the pie a little. It looked pretty though.











They ordered food from City Shop and prepared a really yummy meal. We had green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes (and I think a few people had the turkey as well). I had a good time. I was happy we still got to celebrate Thanksgiving, even though we are far from home. We even did the thing where we went around the room and said what we are thankful for. I really appreciate all the work Alex did planning it and Chrissy and Barb for hosting us!

Tian Zi Fang

I think my favorite place to go out in Shanghai is an area called Tian Zi Fang or Taikang Road in the French Concession. We have gone there about four times now. We finally went during the day so I got a few good photos. It looks like an old fashioned Chinese road. Most of the buildings here are just hideous skyscrapers that put little to no attention into their exterior aesthetic.

Tian Zi Fang has a bunch of restaurants and shops including about a half dozen Thai restaurants, a burger place, and a NY style pizza place (which unfortunately happened to be under construction the day we planned to eat there). I think when we moved to Shanghai, knowing the size of the city's population, I thought there would be a lot more areas like this. It is one of a handful of areas foreigners frequent. You see plenty of local people there too but only a small fraction of locals can afford to go to the restaurants there. I guess Shanghai is developing rapidly though, maybe by the time I leave there will be a few more areas similar to it. We tend to go to Tian Zi Fang the way we would go to center city in Philly.

Food

Some people mentioned that I made it sound like I can't find anything to eat here. I have to admit, as a vegetarian who doesn't always like Chinese food, the first few weeks here were pretty difficult. Once we figured out our way around the city and found a few restaurants I felt comfortable with, it got better.

Shanghai is a big city and it has pretty much anything you want, if you know where to look. There is City Shop and Ole and the avocado lady to get western groceries when we feel like cooking. You can also order just about anything, including food, on taobao.com (the Chinese equivalent of amazon.com) and it usually arrives the next day. There are two websites (http://www.sherpa.com.cn and http://www.mealbay.net) that do food delivery. They mostly cater to foreigners and have every type of cuisine I want. The shopping malls, especially Grand Gateway, are about a 15 minute walk from our place and have plenty of good places to eat. There are a few areas in the French Concession like Tian Zi Fang with plenty western restaurants.

The main problem with finding food here comes from going out with a group when I don't get to pick the restaurant. In Chinese restaurants typically everything is family style. They give one person the menu to decide what to order for the table. I always feel bad because as a vegetarian, I make things difficult and people have to go out of their way to order special foods for me. The problem is most of the vegetarian dishes are really bland. I may have mentioned before that a lot of vegetarians in Asia are Buddhists. Buddhists aren't supposed to partake in worldly pleasures so the food is very bland. Buddhist vegetarians don't eat garlic, onions and a few other of my favorite seasonings.

Recently, for the sake of trying to meet new people and find new foods, I found a vegetarian dining club. I went to brunch with them at a restaurant called Da Shu Wu Jie. It was pretty yummy and the people were very friendly.

Hair Salon

At home I only get my hair done once every six months. Ok, most people probably do it way more often than that but it is expensive. Here you can get a haircut plus a massage at a nice salon for 30 rmb (just under $5.00). You can get a cheap one for about 8 rmb (just over $1.00). I was sort of scared they wouldn't understand me and mess it up so I made Danny come the first time I got a haircut here. After I realized they include a shoulder message I started thinking I should do it more often. One night after dinner at our favorite hot pot place with our friends Hiraa and Aquib we all went to get our hair done and massages together. It is sort of a nice, cheap activity to do here. They do tend to fluff up my hair though and make it all poofy. I think it is because Chinese people have really straight hair and it doesn't really get poofy so they assume everyone wants more volume. Maybe next time I'll just get the massage.

Out of Towners

My parents had some friends visiting Shanghai from Philly so after a brief stop at Jin Mao Tower, we took them out to dinner in Tian Zi Fang. Being around tourists really makes you see a city through their eyes. They had a million questions about things I've come to take for granted about life here. They wanted to know how people here view the world. They were amazed by basic things like where all the people come from and what sort of jobs they have.



I can't believe we have only been in Shanghai for 3 months. Several people have said to me now that time just moves more slowly here. It seems like so much has happened for it to be such a short time.

Silk Market etc

Last weekend we went to the South Bund Soft-Spinning Material Market. It is a pretty massive fabric market. There are four floors filled with booths. Some of them specialize in Chinese silk, others have suit material, fabrics for sofa upholstery, and anything else you want. There are tailors at each booth who will make the fabric into any garment you request. You have to bargain to get a good price and me and Danny are pretty awful at it. They tell you a much higher price than they intend to sell for and if they see you are a foreigner they tend to triple the amount. I bought some fabric to decorate my classroom with and I definitely got ripped off. It was still reasonably cheap though so I don't mind. I really should work on my bargaining skills though.

Assemblies

So a lot of the other foreign teachers tend to dislike assemblies but I think they are a very interesting cultural experience. If you have ever watched a really cheesy Asian variety show on TV, then you have an idea of what they are like. The kids put on little performances, they sing, they dance, one time a little girl did a nun-chuck demonstration. It is pretty interesting.

It is set up that each class is supposed to arrange one assembly. The class assemblies teach the school about what their class is doing plus allows time for each teacher to give out student awards. Once a month is a birthday assembly, so far the kids had one assembly where they made ice cream and one where they made fruit platters. Every so often is an assembly for something special like a scholarship competition. The kids who entered each had to prepare a performance and a poster.
















Some of the reasons foreign teachers tend to dislike assemblies is they are long, mostly only Chinese is spoken (so we don't often know what is happening), the kids have to dress up and put on shows in a way that only a stage mom could think up, and the kids in the audience have to sit very straight, still and quiet on the floor of the gym for a somewhat unreasonable length or time.

Today was a special assembly for the school's birthday. I found it sort of surprising it falls in November rather than the start of the school year. Anyway, a lot of important people like school board representatives and the local news reporters attended. Normally, we only have our department at assemblies but since it was a special occasion the other department came too so it was quite a fire hazard. The kids all dressed up in their fancy school uniforms, which looked nice, except they had to wear sweaters and it was unseasonably warm today. Aside from a few boring speeches the kids sang songs and waved flags. One group of kids did a performance of the show Stomp. Another group danced to what I can only guess was a patriotic song because they all wore army costumes. Some of the male Chinese teachers did a rap to the tune of Eminem. Some of the female Chinese teachers did a modern dance to some pop song while wearing really short shorts. The funniest part was when they demonstrated in a video how they could play songs using their ipad software, then about a dozen kids came out and played a song together on their ipads. I never saw anything like it before.

Qi Bao

Last Sunday we checked out an area called Qi Bao. It was recommended to us by one of my co-workers, Lily, who lives near it. She doesn't speak much English but at the teachers' dinner the week before she told Danny about it and we decided to check it out. It was one of those old fashioned looking Chinese streets, a bit like the bazaar by Yu Yuan Garden but far less tourists.














It was incredibly crowded. Almost everyone there looked like a local. I only saw a handful of western people the whole time we were walking around.














Lily told Danny that they had a lot of places that would be good for me to find vegetarian foods. There were a ton of snack foods for sale. We found homemade potato chips that were really yummy. We later found out you could order them online and they get there the next day. Shipping was free if you spend more than $5. We also tried sweet rice and beans inside a bamboo stick, cotton candy and some fruit I had never seen before that was sort of similar to a mango.


























We took a boat ride in the very dirty water to enjoy the scenery.























Qi Bao was a pretty cool area, but it was way too crowded and I felt sick so we didn't stay too long. We got hotpot in a restaurant nearby afterwards. Hotpot is becoming the one Chinese food I really like. Most of the time I eat western foods or at least Chinese-ized western foods. It really is a big enough city that I'm starting to feel like we can find most things. At first I wasn't sure and I was intimidated by the language barrier and how unappealing the outside of buildings look here. I'm enjoying exploring new neighborhoods now. So far my favorite area is Tian Zi Fang, I don't have any decent pictures of it though because we went at night and our camera sucks.

Shanghai Museum

Last weekend we stayed around Shanghai and decided to see a few sights in the city. I was starting to feel a bit uncultured having been in a new city for almost two months and barely visiting any museums. I was sick, yet again (and still am actually) so we didn't plan to stay very long. Ah, the joys of working in schools; I get colds constantly.

We didn't make it out of the house until about 1:30 and then we stopped at the food court at Metro City, one of a half dozen shopping malls in Xujiahui, for roti stuffed with fruit and I got distracted searching the English section of the bookstore for things my students might like. By the time we actually made it to the museum we only had two hours before we had to head home and make brownies to bring for Hiraa's yummy home cooked Pakistani dinner.

The photo of Danny, in desperate need of a haircut, is him in front of the museum. The weird alien spaceship shaped building is the view of the Radisson from the museum. Don't quite know what they were going for but I like it.














The museum had a little line at the security check to get in. They let me bring water inside but made me drink some to prove it wasn't gasoline or something.

The museum itself was pretty small. We definitely could get through the whole place in an afternoon if I was being more ambitious. We ended up just looking at the paintings and the pottery. The collection was pretty nice. Here are a few pictures of what I saw. I really wish we had a better camera because these aren't the best shots.