Today was a pretty good day…I think I’m adjusting a lot better to being here. The first week was pretty bad because I just wanted to go home so much so I didn’t try to make the most of my time here. I think I’m just too used to being in my comfort zone that I didn’t want to be out of it. We started the day by visiting the Shanghai Urban Planning Center. We basically saw the history of Shanghai, the present day Shanghai, and the future Shanghai all in one building. It was really cool, because they made a mini model of what they plan for Shanghai to look like in the future, and it was EXTENSIVE. My goodness, it was so big that I couldn’t take a picture of it, so I took a video and just panned everything. And there was just so much detail in the models that it was amazing. It was truly overwhelming. But the whole museum was quite enjoyable..there was so much to see and read about, and we didn’t even finish the whole building. There were 5 floors and we only made it to 4 due to time. But I think we saw the most impressive parts of it, so that’s good…Shanghai’s success is definitely measured by the number of skyscrapers it has though. In the model of its future, there are TONS of skyscrapers and large buildings…almost no small, low-level buildings. It’s kind of sad, really, but there were a few historical zones that Shanghai is planning to preserve.
After that, we were rushed for time, so we went to a food court in a mall for lunch. I had a shrimp pancake ..i didn’t like it that much. I mean it was okay and I ate it because I was hungry, but I wouldn’t order it again. I think I just don’t like that type of pancake. After lunch we took the subway to the French concession to go to church at SCF (Shanghai Community Fellowship) again. It was a pretty good message, but this time it didn’t really speak to me as much. Plus, I was really tired and the pastor kept telling us to close our eyes and bow our heads to meditate..but that wasn’t a good thing because I kept falling asleep. In my defense, it wasn’t only me…all the other PESI students were falling asleep too. After church we went to the same restaurant as last Sunday for the professionals dinner. Guess who I saw there….YUP, Laurie! Hahaha. Anyways, even though Laurie was there, I chose to talk to a girl named Catina (I don’t know how to spell it..) who graduated from UC Berkeley with a psychology degree, but did a journalism internship for a magazine in Bejing, and then moved to Shanghai to teach English. Pretty weird huh? It was definitely a good reminder to me that my options are open even though I’m studying psychology right now. Anyways, that was really fun…
And after that a bunch of us went to the supermarket down the street because we wanted ice cream :) :) :) Guess who wanted ice cream first, and made everyone else want it? Hahahaha that’s right…yours truly :) I actually really wanted a red bean popsicle, but they didn’t have them, so I got an ice cream instead. Anyways….yeah, today was really fun. I don’t have a lot to blog about today… Today was just a lot of walking and hanging out with people. Not too much learning…but I definitely feel like today I made a serious effort to break out of my shell and be more friendly and conversational with people. I think sometimes, especially when I’m out of my comfort zone, that’s really hard to do, so today was just significant in that sense. Oh yeah, one of the girls I was talking to today said I talk like a white person. Wtheck is that supposed to mean. She said there’s a difference when ABC’s talk and when white people talk. She said Dan (who is white) talks like an ABC but I talk like a white person. I don’t know if I should be offended…because she said that ABC’s tend to use bigger words and sound more academic. So I feel a little bit offended, because she sort of implied that I sound like an idiot. And she told me this after we JUST finished having a pretty intellectual conversation about how I couldn’t be a good doctor because I believe the pharmaceutical companies are exploiting sick people by paying doctors more to constantly diagnose sicknesses and diseases that need loads of pills. Yeah, so what she said sort of rubbed me the wrong way. And I know she definitely didn’t mean it, but I feel like sometimes she thinks she’s better than everyone else. Or at least, better than me. That’s how she acts sometimes.
Anyways, I STILL have a lot of reading to do (I’m only on day 3) and I have to wake up early tomorrow morning. We pretty much have a completely free day tomorrow, but we’re supposed to use it for planning for the migrant school project. FOR SOME REASON, my team wants to meet at 8:30am. Yeah, not fun. SO, that’s what’s going on tomorrow. I think me and Joanna are going to try to do laundry by hand tonight…it’s actually kind of expensive to do it here. So we’ll see how that works out…
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