Archive for General Life

A New Type of Amusement Park

May 17, 2009 · Filed under General Life, Trips · Tagged , , ,

I received an email earlier this week reminding me of my participation in the upcoming JI – U of M treasure hunt. This was very interesting to me since I had no idea that I was even signed up to go on such a trip, but apparently it was part of our agenda here. The email said that the hunt would take place at the Oriental Green Boat amusement park. Naturally I assumed it was some kind of park with roller coasters in a cedar point sort of way…  but I was completely wrong.

We arrived to the park and I quickly realized this was not an amusement park by the definition I was familiar with. It would be hard to exactly classify it as a park since I have never seen anything quite like it in the States.

As I walked into the entrace we were greeted by the following view:

(As an interesting side note: If you look closely you will see the world expo 2010 mascot Haibao… I told you he was everwhere)

After getting through the entrance we were told we were going to have to go to a waiting area while the volunteers went to the different sections of the park to set up. I was expecting to go to some grass field and wait… but I was wrong. We went under a bridge and then were treated to the following surprise:

The first thing we saw on our way to the waiting area.

The first thing we saw on our way to the waiting area.

A fake but real life size aircraft carrier

A fake but life-sized aircraft carrier

We give about 40 mintues to explore the inside of the Aircraft carrier which had lots of lifesized planes, tanks, helicopters, and other military equipment you can see more of the pictures from the trip on my web album. We quickly learned that this park is also used for military training for teenagers and young adults (my guess ages 16-22 range). Apparently military training is mandatory for all Chinese people to particpate in at some point in their life. The military training seemed very different then what one might expect. Everything seemed to be really relaxed. The instructors which lead groups of about 20 or so people seemed to be only loosly keeping them in check, and there was lots of gigglying and joking around it seemed.

Girls making a joke during training

Girls making a joke during training

There was also a large group of what must have been elementary school children and we got the rock star treatment again. One student would see us and then they would quickly nudge their friends next to them and point. They seemed to be very entertained with the foreigners at hand. The 35 minutes was pretty fun and the ship had a lot of cool things to see. I also was able to make my mother proud  by ordering a cold beer at 10:30 in the morning.

After our free time we met and were told the rules of the game.

We were split into teams of 5 students each. Each team had around 3 U of M students and 2 JI students. We were given a park map and a list of 8 areas that we had to visit. At each area there would be a student there waiting for us and we would have to pass a task. If we successfully passed the task we would get a gold token, and if not we would get a black token. The first two teams to successfully pass all of the challenges and make it back to the main gate first would win a prize.

Map of Oriental Green Boat Park

Map of Oriental Green Boat Park (click for full size)

The challenges included the following items (in the order that my group did them)

  • Wisdom Avenue: We were given a paper with pictures of statues. We had to find the statues from many different sculptures on the avenue and write down their names.
  • Knowledge Seeking Island: Each group was given a number. They had to search the island for pieces of paper that had a trivial clue on it. Then they had to figure out what it was refering to.
  • The Lawn: Where the groups ate a 20 minute Chinese lunch.
  • Fun Bridges: (My favorite area.) There were many obsticle bridges that went from one side of moat to the other side with a net underneath. Each group had to get their team acroos various bridges without falling into the water.  One group had a student that didn’t quite make it across the bridge and ended up getting soaked.
  • Hero’s Road: (My second favorite area.) This was a very large obsticle course that the group had to pass. It included doing things like climbing over a large wooden wall with the aid of a rope.
  • Maize Route: The group had to get through a maize made out of bushes.
  • Super Market: The groups were given a sheet with a list of items on them. You then had to go into the market and find the price for each item.
  • Chinese Restaurant: This part of the park had many different buliding that were named for a specific country. You were given a piece of paper with a specific countries building, then you had to find the building and take a picture of it.
View at the end of Wisdom Avenue

View at the end of Wisdom Avenue

My group started off kind of casually, but as we arrived at lunch we met another group and a rivalry was created. We got more into the game as the day went on. Eventually we were jogging occasionally between events, and we always tried to do each task as quickly as possible.

I am not going to lie to you… I love scavenger hunts, and I got really into this one. This was probably my favorite activity of the trip thus far. It didn’t hurt that my group ended up winning the hunt, beating the group we met at lunch by about two or three minutes (out of a few hour scavenger hunt). Eventually all of the groups made it back to the start, while we waited we ate some dinner (McDonalds), and relaxed for a bit, and played hacky sack.

When the last group got back, we were given our prize which was a gift card for karaoke for 400 RMB (not bad considering my bike costs 200 RMB). We then had about three hours to go around the park on our own. I went back to the fun bridges and the hero’s road. There was a ton of bridges that I didn’t get a chance to do try when doing the treasure hunt. I wanted to make sure I did every single one. There was one bridge that I really thought I was going to end up in the water on, but was able to pull it off in the end. The second run of hero’s path was a lot fun also. We made sure to hit all of the obstacles and made some more up for ourselves that were probably not naturally intended to be part of the course.  Then headed back to the main gate in rented bike carts having a race along the way.

Overall it was a great day. The park was absurdly gorgeous and it just had a lot of things to do. It was the kind of place that I think my brother, dad, myself, and Mallory would love. Some students didn’t seem to enjoy it as much, but I think it was really what you made of it. The only thing I can see being a problem was that the park was HUGE, and some of the tasks were pretty physically demanding. I think it pushed a lot of students pass the points that they normally go, and was a very good workout.

Most students fell asleep within the first five minutes of the trip back to campus

Most students fell asleep within the first five minutes of the trip back to campus

After we got back to campus, a group of us decided to use the card that we had just won and went to a Karyoke place. Apparently Karyoke is huge in China, and there are places to embarrass yourself singing everywhere. We had about 14 of us, got our own private room (as everyone does), a few drinks and started singing away. If you know me, you know I don’t sing, but last night everyone sung. It was just a nice cap to and awesome day. I also ended up making some Chinese friends there. It was a little rough since we both spoke basically none of the others language but it was a good time. (Check the web album for pics)

The start of the night... we were just getting warmed up.

The start of the night... we were just getting warmed up.

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A Normal Day…

May 11, 2009 · Filed under General Life · Tagged , , ,

Today was the first day that seemed to be routine. I finally feel like I am getting into somewhat a groove. I still have some problems to solve such as finding a solution to the incredible heat here so I don’t have to change clothes throughout the day (although we do have AC in our room) and finding a CBC atm.

I woke up went to class, came back took a nap, and went to the soccer field with my 7 dollar pair of total90′s. A didn’t take a picture of them until after I wore them and the field here just destroys shoes. They were originally white. The temperature cools off quite considerably at night and the weather was nice for soccer. It took me awhile to get in a game, but I eventually got in one. I played a bit better today, and started things off with a pretty nice goal from probably 20 yards out. I was very disappointed in my conditioning though and it will takShoese a while for me to recover from this 5 week cold that just won’t go away. (I am still coughing, but have decided I am well enough to start training again.)

After soccer I poked around and juggled with a few guys and then went for a 3 mile run on the track. I am still amazed with all of the activities around the soccer field and track area. As I mentioned before there are people doing the three leg race in groups of around 8 (which I guess is a Chinese tradition of some sort),practicing dancing, running, playing catch with a baseball, soccer,there were guys walking around with ping pong paddles but I have no idea what they were doing, older women walking around the track backwards, and people practicing random drills. It is just a very lively area.

The other amazing thing about this area is that it does not really shut down with the sun going down. Some people will still do things such as soccer in the dark. This is especially true of the people playing basketball. Basketball is even more popular than soccer among the students and there are still a few games going on hours after the sun has ceased to be seen.

I ended up finding a new restaurant on campus since I missed the canteen hours for a late dinner after soccer. It took me a long time to order since you actually had to say what you wanted and you couldn’t just point. I was determined to eat there though since the food looked very good. The cuisine consisted of mainly meat and some vegetables such as broccoli kabob style on wooden sticks, all heavily spiced. Eventually I called my roommate who can speak Chinese decently and found a random student and handed her the phone. The girls here seem to really get a kick out of me struggling to do simple things such as order food. She helped me order some food that contained chicken as per my request.

There was a young girl who seemed to be in charge of the little restaurant and would shout orders very loudly and with a slightly angry tone when the orders were ready, but when my order was ready she brought it out to me myself. There are some definite perks to being a foreigner here.

After dinner I ran into a group of students from Purdue who had arrived on Campus yesterday. They were not engineers and were only here for 10 days only and said they didn’t really have a real course but still would end up with 3 credits. They were very intent on finding a place to drink on campus so we didn’t talk too long, but there is a chance that our groups may go out together this weekend.

That pretty much wrapped up the main points of the day. Fill in the gaps with studying and laundry and you have my Monday.

On a side note: I added some pictures to the Shanghai Day tour from my roommates camera. There are some pretty good pictures including more of the cute kids who wanted to take pictures with us.

The Pictures can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/Tom.J.McCurdy

or www.tinyurl.com/b0otpics for short.

Kids wanting to take pictures with me

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You Play Soccer?

May 11, 2009 · Filed under Food, General Life · Tagged , , , , ,

This morning… (by morning I mean about 1:00pm) I woke up and rushed for some breakfast before our scheduled U of M Welcome Party. I know we have only been here a week, but it seems to be much much longer and the idea of a welcome party seemed a bit odd for everyone even though this is the first weekend after arriving.

Lunch at the Canteen was only serving fried rice. Rumor was that there was not going to be any food provided at the welcome party so I had a large helping of rice and one of the drinks that is a cross between milk and a drinkable yogurt to get some calcium. I then got my first experience in a new mode of transportation that is very popular here… riding on the back of someone’s bike.

Bikes are the main form of transportation for all students here meaning there are loads of bikes everywhere. Between classes you are basically playing a game of frogger to cross the street. Most of the bikes are somewhat old, single speed, and have a flat grate like structure on the back over the rear tire. Students will use this back grate as a seat and peddle each other around campus. I got to ride on one from the canteen to our welcome party location and i must say it was quite fun, and quite an ab workout.

Just as I arrived at the party on my bike I finished my large drink (which is incredibly filling) and see that there are all sorts of food there for us to eat. :(

Events started off with a few quick questions from the staff about our experiences thus far. Basically the general opinion was that everyone was having a great time, especially when it came to going out at night. We then participated in a series of games involving the University of Michigan students and their buddies.

I have not talked about the buddy system very much because my buddy has been gone since he helped me carry my bags into my room,but I will review it for a second. Basically every Michigan student was given a buddy that is suppose to help them adjust to life in Shanghai and the university. The system was designed to help us have a source for help with problems no matter when they might occur. They also come with us on trips and help introduce us to various parts of the city. Overall I would say the system has worked amazingly. The Chinese students always seem willing to help us in every way possible for the most part. The only real problem I have heard about with buddies is with mine who has been busy with exams and student government elections and hasn’t had much time to hang out. (After starting the classes here I can see how one might be short on time)

The games were pretty fun and most of the group seemed to enjoy the start. One game had participants tie one leg to a partner in a three leg race fashion with a balloon tied to each ankle. You then tried to pop the balloons of the other teams.

After the introduction and games we had different stations that we go to to participate in various activities. One station had games related to the use of chop sticks and marbles, another station was set up so you could write your name in Chinese with paint, and the final station was could be described as similar to a hacky sack juggling station. So of course I went straight to the juggling station.

The juggling station used what is most easily described as a shuttle cock in badminton which was designed to be kicked. The students started to explain how it worked and I gave it a shot. They were very impressed with my first attempt as I ended up getting around ten or so. They became very excited when I started to get more, and by the end of the day my score of 92 was enough for me to win the competition by a fair margin. (The Chinese students participated in the juggling contest too) I ended up getting approached by quite a few people throughout the day asking me about my soccer experience and telling me that I was very good at the game. I also won an odd stuff animal that the girls here seem to really like. On a curious side note apparently the name of this particular stuff animal is very similar to a very dirty Chinese phrase.

After the games we were treated to food, a tia chi lesson, and some music by a Chinese student band playing American music. The band was actually quite good, and I found it odd that they were able tosing without a Chinese accent.

Overall the party was fun and I am continually impressed with how much effort is put in to making us feel welcome here.

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These b0ots were made for walking

May 10, 2009 · Filed under General Life


Today was by far the longest day here…. it was on day long tour of Shanghai starting at 7:45 AM at the main gate of campus.

Our trip started off with a subway trip to the Xuhui Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong (the university where I am currently studying) which was original campus of the university in a much more downtown part of campus.

Campus

The next stop was the Xin Tian Di Tour.

When we first starting walking around we were immediately approached by a mob of little kids wanting to take pictures with us. It is quite a good feeling having so much attention paid to you. I only managed to snap one picture of the kids but hopefully I can find some more pictures from other kids.

We went to the Memorial House of the first national Congress of the China Communist Party which was the location where they party was found on July 23, 1921. It is a location similar to the liberty bell for us on the states. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures of anything inside the museum, but I have a couple pictures of a famous plaque outside building and a large Chinese flag in the lobby.

After the memorial house we had a little free time where I saw an amazing pond structure in the middle of the block.

We then jumped onto the bus to Tian Zi Fang.

Tian zi fang is an old section of town that has many different local art studios. There were lots of little bars, Thai, Japanese,and of course Chinese cuisine. There shops ranged from old style items to extremely modern pieces of art. I particularly liked one artist who would use one figure and create an illusion of armies of the same figure. (Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed). We had lunch here at a Japanese bar where I had some Curry, Chicken with egg and rice, salad, and some other items of which I could not identify.

The next stop was People’s Square and East Nanjing Rd. Nanjing Road is kind of the main strip in downtown Shanghai it seems. There are tons of very large shops, lights, and sights. There are also endless solicitors always wanting to be your best buddy.

Nanjing Rd

The solicitors have common items that they are trying to get youto purchase:

-Shoes

-Bags

-Watches

-Electronics

-These skate things that you attach to your shoes so you can skate in a fashion similar to Heelies in the states.

-Green Lasers (at night)

They are quite relentless in their pursuit of your business, but the skate people are the worst because they have a pair of skates on and will follow you for up to a half mile or so it seems sometimes.

I actually went with one of the people wanting to sell me watches to their place of business. There was a small shop and they took me to the back through a door that was somewhat hidden. They showed me watches, dvd’s, shoes, and bags. I was mainly just curious to see what they had and did not purchase anything.

We then proceeded to the Shanghai urban Planning Museum. This museum focused on what Shanghai was hopping to become. Shanghai is hosting the World Expo in 2010, something I hadn’t even herd of before coming here. Apparently this is a huge deal, and there are literally advertisements about it everyone throughout all of shanghai. There is even a mascot Haibao that is incredibly odd shaped but literally everywhere. There was even a large store on Nanjing road that was basically just filled with various stuffed animal versions of the character.

The planning museum showed very grandiose plans for Shanghai’s near future which makes sense considering the massive amount of construction taking place. They had massive scale models of the city in the future which were impressive in their own right. The actual details of the plans were hard for us to decode as the signs at the exhibits were all in Chinese.

After the museum we went to the old street & Yu Garden. This section of town consisted of many buildings that you would classically think of if you thought of Chinese architecture. It was an older section of town with many small vendors everywhere. I had been looking forward to this part of the day because we were told that we would be able to get various items for good prices here. The shops didn’t fail to meet expectations. I made a couple souvenir purchases and got a pair of total 90 knock offs for about 7 us dollars. I doubt they will last more than a month, but at 7 dollars who cares. The fun part of shopping here is the price negation. You will get a very high price to start off most often and will be able to talk them down to about 1/4 that price most often, sometimes lower.

The other great part of this location was their world famous dumpling shop. We waited in line for a long time for fresh dumplings… but it was so worth it. I had never tasted a food like it before and it was absolutely delicious. It was the first food item that I truly excited about and will miss when I leave. (This is not to say I haven’t had other good dishes, this one was just exceptional)

The next part of the trip was traveling to Pudong and taking a ferry across the bund so we could get on a boat cruise on the Huangpu River. This was a very nice and relaxing part of the day. The inside of the boat was very fancy and we were treated to endless eye candy. Glowing building radiated from every direction on the boat, beers were 5 RMB, we had cake to celebrate a professors birthday, and we finally got off our feet for awhile. There are quite a few pictures of this part of the trip on my web album.

At this point in the trip our official agenda ended, but our unofficial agenda had just begun. We decided to go out on the town. I am going to skip most of the details on how we got to the club, let’s just say it took forever and doing anything with a large group of tired people is a pain in the @ss.

When we finally ended up at our destination and got inside De LaCoast (the same club that we went to before) it was a completely different experience (other than it being an open bar). The club was fairly packed, and became pretty crowded as the night wore on. It was a very fun experience. It seemed as an international hub for students. There were people speaking all sorts of languages (German,Swedish, French, Chinese, English, Italian… etc). It was fun to see so many people from our program dancing on the floor at one time.

We ended our trip with a taxi ride back to the dorms and a long night of sleep (after a short phone call to Mallory :) )

Club

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A very short day

May 9, 2009 · Filed under General Life

Well as a byproduct of staying out last night and a long week of adjusting in general my body decided I should sleep in until 4pm today. My roommate slept for probably 2-3 hours longer than I did as a product of going to bed earlier and not having to fall asleep to the sound of him snoring.

I just wanted to mention how much I enjoy the fact that when the library is closing here they play some very interesting music over the speakers. It sounds somewhat like Kenny G.

I also finally found something that is kinda of like a roll with dinner that doesn’t have something weird inside. Well truth be told it is more similar to an elephant ear than a roll, but it was a good find none the less.

I am posting pictures to my web album at http://picasaweb.google.com/Tom.J.McCurdy

(or http://tinyurl.com/b0otpics for a shorter url to the same place)

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Panda Express is not Chinese Food

May 7, 2009 · Filed under General Life · Tagged , , ,

I love Chinese food. Or at least I thought I did. I like many Americans think of restaurants like Panda Express when asked if I like Chinese food. So when I was making preparations for China I naively expected the food to be the same things on the menu (or at least similar) but just prepared better. This was definitely not the case… at all.

There are five canteens (or cafeterias) on campus which serve a wide variety of options for food. You simply go up to the counter ask for what you would like (or in my case carefully point) . The system seems simple, and for the Chinese students here it is, but for students from the States like me we have a problem.

Compared to the food at the canteens I have a great idea of what this is.

Compared to the food at the canteens I have a great idea of what this is.

We have no idea what is in the vast majority of the dishes. They often contain many exotic looking items that can be described most often with an “ish.” Words like soup-ish, bread-ish, meat-ish, is how my mind interprets what my eyes are seeing. I will often try to ask a student what something is, which occasionally will work, but not always. One thing I have learned is not to ask a student what they think is good– you will end up with something you probably have not acquired a taste for yet.

Sometimes even when something looks relatively safe, it isn’t. I thought I finally found something similar to an orange chicken type of dish today. However it turned out that the meat still had bone in it. Infact I found it difficult to find anything but bone on the pieces of meat.
I have been forcing myself to try new things, and sometimes a few dishes do taste quite good. Today for example I had a meal that had some sort of meat and potatoes, and the potatoes were delicious. Overall I would say the food here is a lot more bland in spice, at least thus far. They also eat rice or noodles pretty much with every meal. The rice is much more sticky here so that you can pick it up with chop sticks. All of the food is essentially eaten with chop sticks and occationaly a large spoon for the soup-ish dishes.

I am a little concerned about eating healthy here. Nothing at the cafeteria fits into what I would be able to classify as healthy food from any experience I have had with food. It doesn’t help that I don’t actually know what most of the food I am looking at is. I was particularly worried about getting calcium since the milk here is different (at least from what I have found thus far) and not particularly keen with my palette. However that problem may have been solved when I found drinkable yogurts at the library store this evening.

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Shanghai

May 6, 2009 · Filed under General Life · Tagged , , ,

Downtown Shanghai

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Mallory was so wrong :)

May 6, 2009 · Filed under General Life · Tagged , , , , ,

Okay first of all… to Mallory… the title will make sense as you read :)

Today was the first day that I had my EECS 401 class. It turns out that I am the only one out of the U of M students taking the class, and only one of 2 U of M students taking both sessions of classes. I am also one of only two U of M students in my only other class. This is a little intimidating as both courses are going at incredibly high paces it seems, and it would be good to have a few study buddies. I also don’t like the idea of missing out on the Chinese language and culture class, but thus far I have attended anyway just to learn the material.

One thing I should note in my class that is very different from U of M is that the students just talk during the lecture if allowed. (one professor is very strict about not talking but I think this somewhat uncommon based on my other class) The students will just talk very loudly a good portion of the time. One student was even getting loud text message notifications and texting in the front row. I gathered from talking to one of the students that they have a hard time understanding the professors english and they tend to learn the material from the book.

They also applaud at the end of lecture.

The campus here is quite beautiful in many parts and I keep forgetting to take my camera out, but I will. The weather is somewhat mild at mornings and night and just gorgeous during the day. It is sunny and the skys are blue which reminds me of my visit to Stanford. It does concern me that it is already too hot for me in the middle of the day and it is only May. I think I will have to buy a bike just so I don’t end up soaking in sweat when I arrive at my classes.

Lunch today was quite an adventure. Me and Jonas, the other U of M student taking EECS 353 with me went to a noodle cafe similar to Mongolian barbecue in the sense that you pick out what you want in a raw form and people cook it. Unfortuently that was the only thing it had in common with Mongolian barbecue and we had no idea what anything was. I was adventurous and grabbed what looked like meat and possibly tofu or fish along with some ramen noodles and possibly seaweed or lettuce. The dish ended up not being to appealing to me as the meat was kind of a weird texture consistency. On a plus side the noodles still tasted good, and it was fun to watch the Chinese watch an NBA basketball game with Yao Ming.

After lunch I decided that I was tired of not working out and even though i still have a cough bringing up good amounts of flem I went to go play soccer. The soccer fields are pretty much packed from sun up to sun down. The ones I went to are inside of a track. The whole track area is an interesting location. There are some people running as is expected, but there are also lots of unexpected things.

Many students will just go around the track and practice random “skills.” This includes things like dribbling with a basketball by themselves in one location, spinning the basketball on their finger, dribbling in soccer, and juggling. I rarely see anyone in the states just practicing such specific tasks in the same numbers.

The soccer games themselves are also kind of weird. They fields somewhat overlap and you kind of just ignore the players not in your game and it is actually alright to dribble the ball through the other game.

I showed up and eventually found a game that was forming. I asked to joined and they hesitantly said yes. It was pretty difficult for me to run as usual and I had to stop and cough quite a bit, especially at the start. The level of play is kind of hard to describe. They are technically very skilled in some aspects but lack some skill in other areas. For example they can do some very good one vs one moves but first touch and their ability to know when they can get the ball is not amazing. They are definitely better than the average people you will find playing pick up in America for the most part.

I played alright for this first time back, being sick, and having my groin bug me, but the evidence of rust was strong. Anyway I played good enough to impress the students and they asked for my email to let me know when they were going to play pickup in the future.

After soccer I locked myself out of my room when I took my shower.

After that I went back to downtown with a group of 4 others… this time in a new area.
I was truly taken aback. The architecture and city in general is exploding with life. Lights dance on nearly every possible object in sight. We were asked many times for things such as ipods, watches, massages, s3xy massages, s3x, and just about anything else you could imagine. Most often the solicitors would come up to me in the group. I was the only Caucasian person out of our group. We had one 1/2 Japanese 1/2 causation, two chinese, and one student from India.

This is the part where I get to explain why Mallory was wrong. Before I left Mallory told me that she didn’t think that the Chinese people would like Americans very much. I have found them to be quite the opposite. They seem to have a fascination of some kind with people who are causation. To illustrate that point today while we were walking along this river in downtown taking pictures this girl probably a little younger than us came up to me slightly embarrassed and asked if she could take a picture with me so that she could remember me. This was just as my group was giving me a hard time about all the solicitors only coming up to the “white” guy.

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ma ma ma ma

May 5, 2009 · Filed under General Life · Tagged , , , , , ,

Well today was quite a day. I apologize if this is less than coherent as I am just returning from the city.

Today was quite an interesting day. I woke up multiple times before my alarm but I managed to stay in bed until about 8:30AM. My stomach was growling as I hadn’t ate too much the night before. I decided to venture into the welcome package and eat one of the snacks they provided. It ended up tasting a lot like animal crackers.

I also had a large minute maid orange juice container that I thought would be good to drink as I was still sick. The drink was not really orange juice, it could be more accurately described as orange drink with a bit of a weird pulp. I ended up drinking a large amount of this drink since I have been very hesitant to drink the tap water here. This lead me to discover another interesting feature about  China. Often times the bathrooms will have the door completely open so that people walking by have full view off the urinals. Usually in the states the bathrooms are designed in a fashion to prevent you from seeing anyone doing their buisness, but here it wide open for display… interesting.

I finally ended up at class for EECs353 about 30 minutes early… and the classroom was already populated with eager students busy studying silently and intently mindlessly performing amazing pen twirling tricks. When the professor finally showed up I was pleasantly suprised to find out that she could speak near perfect English. She was better than many of my professors back home.

On a down side the professor seemed to be very difficult and we did an entire year of 216 in review in about 45 minutes. We meet 4 times a week and have a homework due twice a week, I am afraid this class is going to be a lot more work than I initially expected it to be. I am also one of only two u of m students who will be taking the class as my roomate who was originally the third student found out he didn’t meet the prereqs.

After 353 I snuck into the Chinese language and culture class. I had intended on taking this class but it conflicts with EECs4o1 so  I was unable to take it. The class will cover much of the chinese language and the students should know around 2oo words at the end.

The Chinese language is very difficult to speak for us u of m students in general. We discovered that there are 4 tones in the language that result in the same word pronounced slightly differently to mean very different things. For example take ma.

If you say ma in a constant high pitch it means mother.

If you say ma starting low and rising high it means hemp.

If you say ma starting high then going low then back to high it means horse.

If you say ma staring high and quickly moving to a low pitch it means to scold

Apparently tones are some of the hardest things to master in chinese and the most obvious identifier of a foreniger. They also can cause very unintentional insults such as mom/horse or dumpling/f@#king

After the language class I got some notebooks (apparently five star has yet to make it to China as the notebooks are very small) and prepared for going to the city.

The IPE students from michigan organized a meet a 6:00pm and a group of about 25 of us (out of 27 or so) ended up going to downtown shanghai. We took taxis to the metro to downtown. The scenery on the train was surreal. Massive building stood out from every angle illuminated by massive lighting structures. Incredible apartments tore from the ground in every possible location. My initial observation of lots of open space seemed to be completely refuted.

When we finally got to Shanghai we split up into 6 groups. My group consisted of four people. Myself, my roomate Chris, Wenting, and Jonas. We decided to grab dinner a a curry restaruent in the largest mall i have ever seen. The curry was very good, although I wouldn’t say it was any better than any of the indian curry’s I have had at Sam’s

After dinner we went outside. It was like times square on steroids. It may have just been the differences that stood out but the infrastructure really impressed me. I was also slightly fascinated by the street vendors. They were selling the most absolute random stuff that you could possibly imagine. From books to panty hose to umbrellas to many items I couldn’t even identify.

We finally made it to our destination a strip of bars. We went in the first bar which was a small little bar and packed what was originally an empty house. I ordered a chinese beer ting tao, which I had tasted in New York and knew I liked. After this bar we went to the second bar which was a lot more interesting.

I noticed a group of Chinese students next to us and ended up going over and talking to them. I didn’t even know if they could speak any English as they were not with our group. It turned out they could speak a little English. I ended up getting my group members to come over and we had a lot of fun trying to talk to each other. Wenting could speak a little Chinese so we could communicate in hard spots. The only name I could understand was Solo. We organized to have our group meet their group to go shopping some time. The conversation was very fun because both parties could only parts of what the other’s was saying, plus Solo said I was handsome… I think.

They taught us a new drinking game which involves far too much math for my liking. They put five dice in cup and shake them and turn them face down on the table. One person then decides who they think has a higher total. If they are right the other person drinks, otherwise they drink, winner stays.

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Random observations:

Basketball is just as popular as soccer if not more among the students.

Everyone I have met plays warcraft 3 and appears to be very good.

Pointing at a dish to to ask what it is will result in you getting to figure it yourself.

Talking to random people is much more enjoyable then figuring out something yourself.

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Day 1

May 3, 2009 · Filed under General Life

I woke up to the alarm on my phone this morning and went downstairs to meet the group for orientation.

We went to a large building which appeared to be dedicated to the connection with the University of Michigan. It was kinda of weird considering our entire international programs in engineering at U of m consists of two offices. We started off with an ice breaker to learn each others names along with a few JI students. It wasn’t to bad and everyone seemed to be really social and nice, although you could still tell we were a group of engineers… there are just those ticks we have.

We were given a breakfast that consisted of a white bread that kind of tasted already buttered with peanut butter and jelly, and a cereal that was somewhat similar to cocoa puffs crossed with cocoa krispies, but didn’t quite taste the same. We were given a kind of milk but it was different to the kind of milk that we get back home, and it was warm. All together this made the cereal portion less than appetizing, and I wish I would have just eaten the cereal plain.

We walked around the campus and it was a little weird. Some of the buildings are what we would consider to be very run down, and others such as the library on campus are very nice. The library was very large with some nice type of stone floor and a very impressive lobby. We walked around it for awhile, and I must say it is very different from the libraries at u of m even those of comparable size such as the dude. It was almost silent in the library, although it was a holiday and classes haven’t started yet so there weren’t very many students actually in the library. The students that were there were studying very intently, no one seemed to be distracted or doing something like facebook.

We went to a new place to eat for lunch and went back for dinner. I ended up getting the same thing which was actually pretty good, except that the meat was cold and my drink (pepsi) was warm. It is so annoying not having cold drinks… you really don’t appreciate it until it is gone. The food itself was pretty decent and althougther about 8.50 rmb including a drink which is about 1.60 us dollars. (nuts)

We also went to a large grocery store which they described as a walmart. The bottom of the store was like a mall in the states with really weird restaurant stands instead of auntie ann’s amazing pretzel stand. The top floor was the actual grocery. It was crazy. It was kind of like a walmart actually except about 105 degrees and very cramped. We were looking for a cell phone for me so I could call home, and a few other supplies such as a towel. I didn’t actually remember to bring a towel to shower with and the first “towel” i got from the local store which apparently is the standard size here was like 24 inches by 14 inches.

After eating and running errands and the tour we went back to the room droped our stuff off went to dinner which apparently should be eaten before 6:00 as the canteens (our cafeterias) have less food after 6, although honestly I don’t know what that means.

We then came back to the dorm room, i had a new friend from the JI help me with my computer and get it working very quickly and then I called home to let everyone know I am alive.

PS: Delievery is free here… and McDonalds delievers… think McDonald’s breakfast free delivery.

PPS: No Tipping

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