Finally, my first post from China! I would pretend that some people have been anxiously awaiting this glorious event, but I didn’t tell any of my potential readers about my blog, so it’s not possible that anybody has been looking forward to reading this entry. As nobody expects anything from me, I can’t let anybody down with how bad my writing is (remember, I’m a biology major—I haven’t written anything but lab reports for two years).

I’ve been in Shanghai for about a week. I’m still having trouble conceptualizing how huge the city really is especially as I haven’t ever really lived in a city. Since I’m going to be here for a semester, I’m not racing to see everything right away. I’m just trying to take it slow and get to know the city (not to slow though, because then I get homesick).

On my second day in Shanghai/ my first day of class, I realized that I had to somehow feed myself breakfast before my first Chinese class. I hadn’t made plans to meet anybody, so I went on my one. I left the university gates and walked about five minutes to the farmers market. I walked into the market, got scared. Walked pass the market, realized that I actually did have to go to class. Turned around, walked back into the market, saw a woman buying live frogs, left the market again. Walked halfway back to campus, realized that I was being super silly. Turned around and saw a street vendor about half a block away, and decided I was going to buy whatever he was offering.

Seriously, I was so nervous to approach this street vendor. I felt like I was at a middle school dance about to ask a boy to dance. I knew I had to do it (or starve) but knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Eventually, after staring for like 5 minutes, I approached, pointed at what he was cooking (a greasy pancake thing with an egg/ chives/ crazy seasonings scrambled in the middle). He then proceeded to speak really fast in Chinese, but once he realized how confused I was he stated miming. I paid him 2RMB (like 0.30USD). After it all, I felt really, really victorious!!

Then I went to my first Chinese class, not so victorious (but its getting better).

I’ve been down to people’s square a couple of times, one time to visit the Urban Planning Museum. The UPM is 4 floors about past, present, and most of all, future Shanghai. The main feature of the museum is a huge city model of what the city will look like in 2020 (there was a Post article about the museum over the summer if any of you happened to catch it). The color buildings are currently present in the city, and the gray ones are building that are going to be built. Apparently the city literally changes every day, so the curators have quite a job. The UPM also features Shanghai’s plans for the 2010 world expo, which is going to be insane from what I can tell. It’s the first world expo to be held in a developing country, and Shanghai is preparing with as much fervor as Beijing prepared for the Olympics. The expo mascot is literally all over the city. It looks like a blue tooth with arms.

Okay, I have to go soon (I smell), but one reason that it took me so long to get around to posting this is that my original china blog, hosted by live journal, is blocked in China. The most fascinating thing about Internet censorship here is that when one tries to load a censored page, she gets an "server down" error. According to an NPR story I heard, most average Chinese Internet users don't even realize that sites are being blocked. Crazy!

After I realized LiveJournal was blocked, i tried to make a blog using Google-hosted blogger. However, in china, blogger.com automatically loads in Chinese. As I can't read characters, this proved more than a little problematic (there wasn't even an "english" button at the bottom of the page, at leas not one i could read). Obviously, I figured it out eventually (yay me!).

Lots of love from the Middle Kingdom