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Meeting Hai Bao

The students met Hai Bao in the People's Square Metro Stop.

Getting used to it, kinda...

Things we've done so far: Shanghai Museum, Propaganda Poster Art Museum (sounds more interesting than you think - picture of Mao playing ping-pong), new calligraphy phrases ("white sword in, red sword out"), plans for the weekend, today was the ceremony to mark the 50th day until the Expo, and yesterday the students set up a fundraiser by selling comics, (signed) posters of celebrities, toys, candy and other things.

At the Shanghai museum, there were 12 exhibits with 4 floors to explore...Mrs. Briggs had us do a scavenger hunt (which only Hannah did) but we mostly viewed art, pottery, jade, clothes & masks...you know....art stuff. As the days go on, by living with our host families, we're (kinda) improving our Mandarin. Gesticulating is at an all-time low.

We've realized recently that Malia is the best at translating ever, so that's always helpful. Hannah has the all-around language brains, and Addy has the looks. 

(And Now Hannah is typing 1 week later:)
On Wednesday the 17th we went to the Jade Buddha Temple. It was pretty cool seeing the big sitting Buddha, even though they were trying to sell us stuff before we even saw the Buddhas. The 2nd Buddha was made of marble so we felt kind of cheated. It was also in the middle of a huge gift shop full of over priced jade.

Sunday:

Oriental Pearl Tower. Space Needle and Eiffel Tower combined. Haibao everywhere. I thought it was boring. The only cool part of the Tower was the touristy revolving restaurant. We had to ask for chopsticks. Apparently it makes a complete turn every 2 hours.

From the Tower you can see the Bund and buildings. On the windows they had arrows and said how far away cities like Beijing and Nanjing are.

Afterwards we went to Yu Yuan Gardens. Feeding the fish baozi and leek dumplings. I even gave them the french fry I packed with me. You could literally reach down and pet the over-fed, giant koi fish. Outside in the shopping area there were Haibaos everywhere, with baby rattles, even in tiger suits. It was very creepy.

Incase you were wondering Haibao is the mascot for the Shanghai World Expo. He looks like Gumby and Colgate's love child. Link to picture: http://images.beijing2008.cn/20071219/Img214218719.jpg

The longer we live here the more we get used to eating with chopsticks, etc. Like "ai ya!" we now say reflexively instead of choice words. Some table manners are still grounded in for me like not slurping and using a napkin during the meal, which for the Chinese they use it at the end when they are full. Examples of different manners: Pushing someone and not saying you're sorry, not saying excuse me/you when you/some burps/farts/sneezes, bring a bowl of rice to your face when there's little rice left.

Check the other blogs for more info.

See they are studying!

Malia, Addy & Hannah, working on their schoolwork for NHS in the reception room in between classes here!

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Ni hao!

What are we supposed to do for a 15 hour plane ride? Try to sleep? Get woken up flight attendants every 2 hours? Watch crazy japanese movies, then realize your laptop is about to die? Debate game theory over simple card games? Try to order a glass of apple juice in mandarin? 

Once we arrived we got a tour of the neighborhood around the school, and there are plenty of things to do and see. We saw a green tea flavored doughnut, and a green tea flavored cake (in Starbucks, which looks identical to the ones back home). The Starbucks coffee mugs are many times as expensive as hairdryers. There is a huge stationary store, with an entire wall filled with tons of different kinds of pens. There is a huge coffee mug in the stationary store that says "this is not a coffee mug."

Mistranslated English runs rampant. Googluck. If you love something, you like it. Hers choice.

Delicious foods: Seaweed soup, chunks of duck, celery and pork, some extremely bony, possibly eel-resembling mystery fish. Steamed buns, a.k.a. baozi (we just found the baozi stand that the kids last year loved, and it's truly amazing! A dollar for 5 of the most delicious little buns you can imagine), noodles at the noodle shop (which is equally as excellent, equally as cheap. Pictures coming soon.), and meats, prepared all sorts of ways.

We just sat in on an English class, which was a very interesting experience. Using vocab about sentence structure that we've never heard before. Partial and complete inversions? There are occasional grammatical mistake in the official text itself. The teacher spelled "Gone" with a "Q," which none of us really had the heart to point out. 

The whole school does eye exercises twice a day, which is a pretty surreal experience. The loudspeaker suddenly starts playing music and counting up to 8 in mandarin over and over again. A huge portion of the students wear glasses because of all the reading and working they're doing. 

Ms. Briggs is apparently better at ping-pong than the average student. We're beginning to suspect she's a hustler. 

We'd like to send pictures along, but the internet here is pretty shoddy. We might set up a flickr account or some such thing, so hold tight.

Still in Needham...

Let the countdown begin!

Just two weeks of school before we leave!

Mixed feelings abound. Apparently we're not allowed to speak English in the house? Mutiny, so soon?

Nervousness, excitement, anxiousness, good old anxiety.

Waking up early (to the tune of 5AM or so?), leaving on a giganticly long plane trip - 13 hours, not including the flight to Chicago. But maybe the flight will be totally stacked with TV and solitaire.

We'll be crazy jet-lagged. "Zombies," says Ms. Briggs. Apparently Hannah can run on only 3 hours of sleep. Few of us believe this.

That's it for now.

R.B.
A.G.
H.R.
(M.S.)