My sixth week of teaching has come to a close, another weekend has passed and I am on day 2 of my 3 day week! On Wednesday after school, I will be taking a train to Beijing for the Qingming holiday. Qingming is loosely translated as “tomb sweeping”. Families go to the tombs of deceased loved ones, clean them off and decorate them. As such, it is somewhat sombre so Beijing may be slightly quiet considering it’s a holiday (which is good for us foreign tourists!).
My weekend began Friday after school when I went to dinner with two of my co-teachers, Tony and Daisy, and Daisy’s 15 year old daughter, Sunny. Sunny has exceptional English for a 15 year old Chinese student so dinner was quite enjoyable and entertaining. She was dying to know everything and anything I could tell her about Canada. We went to a hot pot restaurant for dinner right along the river; it was really cute! A hot pot table has a burner in the middle of the table and we get a giant pot full of soup with fish pieces and tofu. You then order side dishes to put in the pot and cook at your own pace. We ordered from a giant sheet of Chinese characters so I had no idea what we were getting. It turns out we got lamb, potatoes, really good mushrooms, little dumplings, greens and little crispy delicious cakes. They tried to order blood, but I told them I just couldn’t do it. I’ve been trying lots of new things but I have to be in a certain mood. I wasn’t in a vampire mood on Friday, I guess. The teachers that ordered the food weren’t sure what was in the dumplings and we discovered that they were filled with fish eggs! I WAS brave enough to try those and while I wouldn’t order them on my own again (they were really hard), they were edible! After dinner, we went for a walk and they took me to get new tights since mine had ripped at school that day (I caught my Grade 9s making fun of me about the, too). Tights are MUCH cheaper than home and are made to last! I will certainly be stocking up (pardon the pun) before I come home!
On Saturday, Sara and I headed into Shanghai for the weekend. Our first stop was a Lululemon outlet that Jess discovered. We found the “outlet” through the side door of a rundown building that was under construction. The “outlet” itself was a tiny room with a construction-paper sign. Inside the small room was wall to wall shelving full of “Lululemon” clothes in plastic packaging. A few display items were hanging on the walls. When you wanted to try something on, you went behind the single curtain with whoever else was trying things on and if you didn’t want it, you threw it into a huge heap in the middle of the room. The quality doesn’t seem too far off, though and since Lululemon clothes are made in Asia now anyway, it is probably pretty similar material. We did find a few items and paid around a quarter of the price that we would pay at home so it was well worth the visit!
From the Lulu outlet we went to a market on West Nanjing Road that we had heard about. I was looking at watches and a woman noticed I didn’t like any that she had on display. She then lured Alyssa and I into a shoe store, walked to a corner, looked around slyly and swung open the shelf and revealed a narrow passageway. She beckoned us in and we followed her to a wall. She then reached to the left and this wall swung open revealing a shelf full of locked briefcases. The briefcases were full of watches! I did not end up getting a watch from her but the experience was something else!
We hit up The Bund in the evening. Jess’s mom had just landed from Halifax with Easter goodies galore and a package from Jason of some things that I was missing J The Bund is a walkway along the river that separates the East of the city from the West. When you look up Shanghai on Google, the skyline you see is taken from The Bund. It was a clear night and the lights were in their full glory – what an evening!
On Sunday, Sara and I wanted to go to church for Easter. We planned out our route to a church, took a subway and realized we were running late. We hailed a cab and tried to explain where we wanted to go (only 2km straight up the road). He did not understand. We tried drawing a map; no dice. We pointed to the words church, catholic and religion in our phrase book; nothing. We then drew a church; blank stare and frustrated Chinese. We were in the process of calling people when he started driving. We knew we were in for an adventure when he took off over a bridge and headed out onto the highway. After 20 minutes of driving away from the city center, I asked him "are we almost there?" (there being a hugh up-in-the-air question). He got really excited and pointed towards this building; it looked exactly like our drawing. Laughing, we started to plan our route back when he rounded a corner and lo and behold....a church! We couldn’t believe it. It was a bit more expensive than we were planning and we were really late and had to stand outside but it was a beautiful day and we got a good story to boot!
There are more stories to be shared from the past few days but I am teaching all day tomorrow then heading from school to an overnight train to Beijing!! This girl needs her beauty sleep. Good night Canada!
My weekend began Friday after school when I went to dinner with two of my co-teachers, Tony and Daisy, and Daisy’s 15 year old daughter, Sunny. Sunny has exceptional English for a 15 year old Chinese student so dinner was quite enjoyable and entertaining. She was dying to know everything and anything I could tell her about Canada. We went to a hot pot restaurant for dinner right along the river; it was really cute! A hot pot table has a burner in the middle of the table and we get a giant pot full of soup with fish pieces and tofu. You then order side dishes to put in the pot and cook at your own pace. We ordered from a giant sheet of Chinese characters so I had no idea what we were getting. It turns out we got lamb, potatoes, really good mushrooms, little dumplings, greens and little crispy delicious cakes. They tried to order blood, but I told them I just couldn’t do it. I’ve been trying lots of new things but I have to be in a certain mood. I wasn’t in a vampire mood on Friday, I guess. The teachers that ordered the food weren’t sure what was in the dumplings and we discovered that they were filled with fish eggs! I WAS brave enough to try those and while I wouldn’t order them on my own again (they were really hard), they were edible! After dinner, we went for a walk and they took me to get new tights since mine had ripped at school that day (I caught my Grade 9s making fun of me about the, too). Tights are MUCH cheaper than home and are made to last! I will certainly be stocking up (pardon the pun) before I come home!
On Saturday, Sara and I headed into Shanghai for the weekend. Our first stop was a Lululemon outlet that Jess discovered. We found the “outlet” through the side door of a rundown building that was under construction. The “outlet” itself was a tiny room with a construction-paper sign. Inside the small room was wall to wall shelving full of “Lululemon” clothes in plastic packaging. A few display items were hanging on the walls. When you wanted to try something on, you went behind the single curtain with whoever else was trying things on and if you didn’t want it, you threw it into a huge heap in the middle of the room. The quality doesn’t seem too far off, though and since Lululemon clothes are made in Asia now anyway, it is probably pretty similar material. We did find a few items and paid around a quarter of the price that we would pay at home so it was well worth the visit!
From the Lulu outlet we went to a market on West Nanjing Road that we had heard about. I was looking at watches and a woman noticed I didn’t like any that she had on display. She then lured Alyssa and I into a shoe store, walked to a corner, looked around slyly and swung open the shelf and revealed a narrow passageway. She beckoned us in and we followed her to a wall. She then reached to the left and this wall swung open revealing a shelf full of locked briefcases. The briefcases were full of watches! I did not end up getting a watch from her but the experience was something else!
We hit up The Bund in the evening. Jess’s mom had just landed from Halifax with Easter goodies galore and a package from Jason of some things that I was missing J The Bund is a walkway along the river that separates the East of the city from the West. When you look up Shanghai on Google, the skyline you see is taken from The Bund. It was a clear night and the lights were in their full glory – what an evening!
On Sunday, Sara and I wanted to go to church for Easter. We planned out our route to a church, took a subway and realized we were running late. We hailed a cab and tried to explain where we wanted to go (only 2km straight up the road). He did not understand. We tried drawing a map; no dice. We pointed to the words church, catholic and religion in our phrase book; nothing. We then drew a church; blank stare and frustrated Chinese. We were in the process of calling people when he started driving. We knew we were in for an adventure when he took off over a bridge and headed out onto the highway. After 20 minutes of driving away from the city center, I asked him "are we almost there?" (there being a hugh up-in-the-air question). He got really excited and pointed towards this building; it looked exactly like our drawing. Laughing, we started to plan our route back when he rounded a corner and lo and behold....a church! We couldn’t believe it. It was a bit more expensive than we were planning and we were really late and had to stand outside but it was a beautiful day and we got a good story to boot!
There are more stories to be shared from the past few days but I am teaching all day tomorrow then heading from school to an overnight train to Beijing!! This girl needs her beauty sleep. Good night Canada!