Yesterday, we had our final pre-departure group meeting. On the schedule it said "Saturday, February 16 - Land and move into apartments; Sara, Shoneth and Alyssa move into hotel". Don't get me wrong, I could certainly be happy living in a hotel in China, especially one with a pool (Lord knows I melt when the temperatures creep past 30 let alone 40). Our daydreams were quickly dashed when Lynn, our coordinating professor, tells us that we are staying in a hotel the first few nights because we live so far from everyone and we need to be around for orientation. How far is far you ask? Well, we are living in a district of Shanghai called Qingpu (pronounced "ching-poo") which is approx. 2.5 hours by public transport from Pudong, the district in which the other 9 students, aka only other English speakers we will encounter on a regular basis, will be living. Peachy....
There IS an upside. All three of us are teaching in Qingpu which means we do not have as long a commute to school (it will still probably be an hour each way). We are also very fortunate to each be teaching in one school a day (whereas our classmates have to bounce between two and even three schools each day). Even though we are living in the boonies (there are ONLY ONE million people in Qingpu) and the region is known for having very very few English speakers, we're pretty happy all in all.
That said, I'm not sure if I should be worried....Mabou has a longer Wikipedia page
There IS an upside. All three of us are teaching in Qingpu which means we do not have as long a commute to school (it will still probably be an hour each way). We are also very fortunate to each be teaching in one school a day (whereas our classmates have to bounce between two and even three schools each day). Even though we are living in the boonies (there are ONLY ONE million people in Qingpu) and the region is known for having very very few English speakers, we're pretty happy all in all.
That said, I'm not sure if I should be worried....Mabou has a longer Wikipedia page