Renovation

So this blog has been neglected for a long time now mostly cause I have not been out of the country since china so I’m going to do some cleaning up of it and polishing and hopefully bring some new life into it. Stay tuned

A U vs. C U

University here in China is very different than school back in the states. Here, there are no dry erase boards, smart boards and computers are not prevalent in classrooms either, in fact they are pretty much non-existent. All the teachers write on the blackboard (actually its green) with chalk. Cheap chalk too because it ALWAYS breaks when they write with it. We have an inside joke about the chalk breaking all the time because it is made in China. There are boxes just sitting on the podiums in varying colors. Of course they all use white unless you write something wrong on the board and then you get corrected in red. All classrooms have very hard uncomfortable desks. In culture class, we have these annoying desks that make no sense. Your chair is connected to the desk behind you. If you move your seat up the desk behind you moves up with it. Desk chasing is a common occurrence. Very annoying. Classrooms aren’t really big like some American ones, they are just very long. A lot of the times teachers need to use microphones and you can hear what they are teaching as you walk past. All classrooms have windows for extra light. They are always open, even now in the winter. One day in Chinese class, we had some old Chinese guy come and lean in the window and just watch our class for 15 minutes or so. It was very weird. Even our teacher was a little freaked out by it. Also, when friends come by during break time they just open the window to say hi and shoot the breeze. One major difference is bells. We have bells that ring every 45 minutes are so and they let everyone know when classes start and end and when our breaks are. Chinese Language is 4 hours long, that means 4 breaks, each one is a different amount of time as well. It almost feels like I’m in high school again. A major downside here is that bathrooms STINK!!! You can small urine down the hall. I guess it is no different than the ones you find out in public. Dirty, sometimes no door, incense is burned for the smell and they are all squatters. I will say I have not used a traditional Chinese toilet since being here. No plans to either. I refused to do it in Japan where the bathrooms are cleaner and I definitely won’t do it here where the bathrooms scare me.

You don’t know what you got til it’s gone

There are moments in your life that you will never forget. Most of them are full of joy while others, not so much. My mother’s generation will never forget where they were or what they were doing the moment J.F.K. was killed. For my generation, it will be 9/11. Another pivotal moment in MY life will be when Obama became President. I was half a world away, in a country where voting is a foreign concept.

Today in Chinese class, while the motherland was watching and waiting for election results, I had an epiphany. One that anybody reading this is probably thinking “moron” but at the moment and even now I feel some sort of enlightenment. Seems that after living months in another country, you sometimes forget things. Our teacher brought in a movie to watch in class and a Finnish student brought one in also. Our teacher told us to choose so one student suggested to put it to a vote. (Yes, you were probably voting for President and I was voting for a movie. Funny how the world works) I’ll never forget the look on my teacher’s face when he said that. She looked so lost and confused. I suppose I wasn’t the only one to notice it because that same student then asked her, “have you ever voted before?”, and she shook her head. We had to explain how it worked. I guess I was just surprised that she had never voted for anything before, not even on something trivial such as which movie to watch. I then realized that voting is an odd concept for people brought up in a country where voting is practically nonexistent. Then I thought that my friends and I take a lot of our freedoms in the states and elsewhere for granted. For instance, when websites and television stations are blocked, we get mad. I don’t stop and think that the people who live here might not even know these things exist. A friend was explaining religion to a Chinese friend who was curious about it and he thought that the Chinese Government was his religion. The other day, another friend of mine was being shadowed by a television crew and they ran into problems because cameras are not allowed on the University premises without first contacting the school’s propaganda department. Something to do with students starting a certain protest in 1989. Here, you cannot express your opinions, specifically about the government because if they are negative than they can be considered sabotage. A lot of the time we don’t stop and think about how lucky we are to have certain freedoms and rights that people in other parts of the world don’t have. So today, I just sat and thought about things and realized how lucky I am. I can’t wait to go back home where I can freely express my views and watch what I want without fear of retribution or some sort of retaliation. I am very thankful and won’t soon forget that.

As for the movie vote, the same Finnish student made a comment about being a democracy and I then pointed out that we were in China which is Communist. After that realization struck everybody, we decided that since we were in a totalitarian state that our teacher would technically be the dictator and so she picked. We watched her movie.

Long time, No post

Wow, it sure has been a while since I last updated this sucker. I blame the slow internet, being too busy, procrastination and pure laziness. This post is going to be short, sweet, and straight to the point. To give a quick update, I went to Beijing for a week a couple weeks ago. I’ll post a nice, very long post about that soon. That’s a promise. Other than that, I have been going to class every day, started going to clubs, doing shadow boxing, watching movies, and American TV shows on the internet. My foot has started to hurt and I have trouble bending my toes, could be a possible stress fracture and I have no desire to go to a doctor. It’s not swollen so I think I’m good. I’ve met tons of interesting people here. I haven’t done a lot of exploring Shanghai but that is due to lack of money, being tired, and adjusting to the world around. I have also decided to post pictures up on snapfish.com because they allow me to have unlimited storage which is nice when I want to share photos with my family and friends. The drawback is that I believe access is restricted, so if you want to see them and I know you, contact me and I’ll give you access. I have also posted a video or two on my youtube account. I have more and will get around to that eventually.

Slippery When Wet

That is perhaps the best way to describe Shanghai. It has rained everyday since I arrived on Saturday and it is not an all day rain but several times throughout the day. As a result, it gets VERY muggy and the roads and sidewalk are all very slippery. I assume that it is from all the pollution. The rain puddles are black and you can see oil in others. The sky is constantly overcast from pollution as well. Besides the rain and pollution, it is not all bad. I have met other people in the same program as I am and we tend to stick together at the moment. The first day was frustrating because we didn’t know what was going on. Yesterday wasn’t so bad after we got some information on classes and found R-T Mart (China’s version of a Walmart). Today happens to be a big holiday here, Mid-Autumn Festival, and the university gave us Mooncake to celebrate. I am suppose to start classes tomorrow (maybe) or at least get registered. I got internet today and am having some difficulty with the infamous GFC. For all my friends on WordPress, I can see your blogs and update mine for the moment at least (that was after writing a pac file to get around the wall). For my friends on blogspot, you are blocked, however, I can still read CNN so apparently bloggers are more of a danger than CNN. I am told Flickr is blocked as well so I’ll have to see about another site to add pictures on. Until then I might make a video of them for youtube or just do facebook. Chinese culture is taking a little while to get used to. It is very different than Japanese, in fact it seems to be closer to America culture wise than Japan. OH!!! There are plenty of Japanese people here and have already had a chance to use my Japanese so hopefully I can keep up with it. Nik and Jon: I met a girl here whose dad happens to be a teacher at Sophia but I doubt you will have him but I thought it was interesting just the same. Well, I’m still tired from jetlag and not sure if I will be able to update this again. I guess we shall see….