Merry Christmas Everyone!

Hope everyone back home is doing well, we miss you. Beijing is wonderful, and we had as good as a Christmas as possible without seeing our families.

The Great Wall is amazing. Who knew?

Off to Beijing

Tomorrow, at around 5:30am, we'll leave for Pudong airport and fly to Beijing, where we'll brave the Wall in sub zero temperatures. I'll try to write again before Christmas.

Today in classes we had our Christmas parties. Last night, cole and I hiked over to People's Square (and by hiked I mean took a cab), where the only Dunkin Donuts in China is. Together, we cleaned them out. All the glazed, All the chocolate frosted. Eight dozen in total, about 480 rmb. The strange thing is that everything in the Dunkin Donuts is taken very seriously. Every donut is counted, each has a separate code to enter into the register, and every one is carefully wrapped and placed into a container. The whole process took us almost an hour, even though we called ahead and pre-ordered all of them.

Our kids appreciated the donuts, and for the entire morning they were bouncing around because of all the candy and donuts (later on that day, around 1:00pm, they had all completely crashed and were napping during my showing of Home Alone 2).

During class, I also found out that I'm losing one of my kids, Ellen. "I'm transferring to a school in America to be an exchange student," she wrote in her journal (I have them keep English journals).
"Really?" I asked her, "You're leaving after the semester?"
She nodded.
"Where?"
She thought about it for awhile, and mummered to herself. Finally she said, "I-da-ho? Boise?"
"Idaho???"
Really? Why there of all places? I looked at Ellen and saw a stylish (the epitome of Asian hipster), opinionated, and tough Korean girl (the Korean boys don't mess with her, because even though she's not that big, she hits hard, I've witnessed it). Would she fit in there?
Ellen then asked me if I liked Idaho.
"Um...I've never been there. I don't know. I'm not sure what's in Idaho."
"Smaller than Shanghai?" she asked.
"Yes, definitely smaller than Shanghai."

I still can't figure out if this will be good for her. Although Ellen is one of my better students, she doesn't speak enough English to have a real conversation with anyone, and I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong) that there are many Korean people in Idaho. How is she going to get by?

Then again, here in Shanghai, Ellen lives by herself in an apartment. Her brother is in college and her parents live in South Korea. She sees them on some weekends, and on a few holidays, but other than that, her parents just give her money and she fends for herself.

From talking to other teachers, I discovered that this isn't uncommon at all here. A good number of our kids live in the city either by themselves, with an older brother or sister, or with other students. At least Ellen is used to living as a stranger in a new country. Maybe she'll learn a lot from living in the States, but then again, maybe she'll also be bored senseless, have to deal with racism, and afterwards will never want to go to the USA again.
Ah well, I don't know. I'm going to give her my email address and tell her that she can email me about anything while she's over there; questions, translations, whatever.

That's about it for now. This past week I also made my first history exam, and I might have made the multiple choice questions way too tricky, especially considering that my history class's test averages run around 65. We'll see what happens.

Time for bed.

A Saturday in Shanghai

• Wake up at 9:00 am, a bit groggy.
• Take a shower, only four minutes of hot water left, darn you cole!
• breakfast is an: overripe orange, china yogurt, and a glass of tomato/strawberry juice (much better than it sounds).

(A short addendum about the overripe oranges. On Wednesday afternoon, Helen, the person in charge of us foreign teachers, calls up the office, and asks all of the male teachers to come out to help her move boxes of oranges. So, there are only three of us: Josh, Chris, and me. "Boxes of oranges?" I ask Josh. Shrug. Ok...when in china. When we get outside, a thin worker is bicycling a mountain of boxes on the back of his bike. All of them are full of oranges. "They're for you!" Helen says with a big smile. "Why?" we ask. And she explains that the sister city of Shanghai, an island that I didn't catch the name of, was in economic trouble because no one was buying its oranges and they were about to go bad. As a favor, Shanghai bought all of the oranges and was distributing it among its teachers.

"Some people sell it to the teachers for a low price," Helen tells us with a look of disapproval, "but we are giving them to you for free!"

We thank her and eventually get around to trying the oranges and they're....well, most of them are past the point of edible. Hmm, a box of rotten oranges. I eat six of them anyway to prevent scurvy). (in current real time, sunday night) a fat fruit fly just meanders pass my line of vision. maybe time to get rid of oranges.

• Pack up grading and head over to Xujiahui for lunch.
• Lunch is pork cutlet curry for me, and vegetable ramen for cole. Pretty good.
• Proceed to Pacific Coffee, home of free internet (also free in the sense that it doesn't come attached with school firewalls), and reasonably priced snacks. Cheaper than Sahtarbuckoos too.
• 6 hours of test grading commences. I try to stab myself with an unsharpened pencil, but miss and only manage to smudge my shirt. A pool of drool collects near my socks.
• A waiter comes up to check on us approximately ten times during our stay. Hey, we paid 24 rmb for our stuff, a bit more than $3, we can sit as long as we like.
• The afternoon passes and the sun sets. Outside the window, three men set up white-wire reindeer on top of fake snow and blue lit trees. They love Christmas here. Shopping and blinking lights, what more could they ask for? They carefully position the trees and reindeer for an hour, and then, the moment comes. They plug it in, and another corner of Shanghai is engulfed in China Christmas spirit.
• Finally, at 6:30 pm, we leave. I can't feel my legs. I resign myself to amputation.
• Cole and I get home and collapse on the couch. Two episodes of Naruto Shippuden clears our head. We pass out for ten minutes, and then it's time to leave for a concert.
• The concert is in Yuyingtang, and the band is Hedgehog, a Chinese indie rock band that sounds pretty good via myspace and youtube. I'm excited, even if I can't quite remember my own name.
• We meet conks (aka rebecca), and steph at 8pm by the school gates.
• Dinner is at Kung-Fu, a fast-food place in Shanghai South Station that has images of Bruce Lee stamped on everything.
• I order pork and tofu over rice (meh). cole has mushroom chicken (slightly better than meh). conks orders broccoli, lettuce, and rice (ok). steph gets tofu and rice and pokes at it suspiciously.
• After dinner we hit up the 1 line, and transfer to the 4 line. "Yuyingtang is right outside of the subway stop," conks tells us. Good, because I didn't wear a jacket.
• We get out and....no yuyingtang. Where is it? We wander left, we wander right. I ask for directions in two stores. In the first store the girl I ask laughs at me, either because of my stilted formal beijing taught accent, or because of my stilted formal cantonesed beijing accent. In the second, the guy stares at me like I'm insane, and then points to the right, just like the girl did before him. Right is the consensus.
• We go left.
• And it's not there. Conks goes off on a two mile jog in search of the club, because she feels responsible for our lost state.
• cole, steph, and I go to a starbucks.
• ten minutes later, conks returns. bad news, no yuyingtang. It's 10pm now, an hour after the start of the show. It's looking bleak for Hedgehog. The solution?
• We walk into the nearest McDonalds and order two deep fried pineapple pies (one for conks, one for me), a sundae for cole, and a fish fillet for steph (she was still hungry). The night just got better. Everyone in the McDonalds watches us eat. Free entertainment.
• Outside the smell of stinky tofu permeates the air. Boo.
• We make one last gasp effort to find the club. During our walk through a park, we find street karaoke, late night rollarbladers, and more stinky tofu, but no club. Alas.
• In a desolate strip of closed stores, we come across a plain, unadorned door. "Jetlag" it says on the awning.
• "I want to go in," steph says, and she opens the door. There's some kind of light....
• "It's a bar!" she tells us. We ask a waitress about the club, she doesn't speak English. Might as well go in, steph decides. Ok.
• We go inside. "Moshi, moshi!" they greet. Huh? Where am I?
• We sit down, and the server says something to me. But it's not Chinese, or English. In front of us, a large group of women are drinking cocktails and sitting on the floor. Wait, no, on mats. "Kampai!" they shout while clinking tall frosted glasses.
• We are definitely in a Japanese bar.
• The menu is only in English and Japanese. The prices are high.
• Cole and I order plain water, and eat the free cheese. We start to wonder how we went from McDonalds to high-end Japanese expats only bar in the span of five minutes.
• The service is impeccable. Cole and I can't stop starting our sentences with "In Japan..."
• The check arrives, and it's 180 rmb!! for a gin and tonic (steph) and pineapple juice (conks). For perspective, 180 rmb is enough for most Chinese people to eat on for two weeks. Turns out there's a 50 rmb sitting fee if you order a drink. Oops.
• Around 11:30pm, we cab it home in a sketchy, broken, peeling, rusted red cab.
• 12:00 am home.
• 1:00 am, pass out.
• Saturday is over.

The clearest day in Shanghai

About once every three weeks, maybe four weeks, the overhanging mist lifts, and the sky opens. What is this feeling? This odd sensation? And then you realize that it's the pollution dissipating for a day. Fresh air?

We had that kind of day a few weeks ago, and have yet to see another one. It was by far the clearest day in Shanghai. No black residue in our tissues, no film of soot on our skin, no construction dust to ride our bikes through.

"I can even see stars!" I said later that night, but then I realized that it was mars and venus (or saturn?).

Oh well, even the clearest day in Shanghai has it's limits.

These days, in mid-December, it's a freakish seventy degrees out. Our kids are wearing shorts, mosquitos have sprouted again, and I spent most of yesterday afternoon playing basketball outdoors with a combination of teachers, local students, and international students.

It has gotten all the way down to around 40 here (which is nothing compared to home I know), but even though I sometimes miss the cold, I'll take the occasional 70 degree day during the winter.

the month of sickness

I've had the same cold for a month now; it's stubborn and tricky, changing itself every few days into a new kind of sickness. These days it's in my lungs or my throat, and surfaces as empty, hacking, propulsive coughs.

"I'm dying," I say to my smaller English class.
One of my Korean girls, Helen, laughs at me. "You're dying? Really?"
"Yes," I respond with all seriousness, "and I don't know why."
"Mr. Wong, have the last cookie," she says, holding out the last of the chips-ahoy I brought in for them that day. We're watching The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe as a reward for finishing the book and I thought they could use some snacks.
"No, no, you keep it," I say, declining the medicinal cookie. And for an hour my kids and I watch the movie together, and we forget that we're in the 105 classroom of the Zhong Xing building.

Before I got here, I would read on other people's blog about the constant illness once winter arrived, and I didn't believe it could happen to me. My immune system has been good to me. I thought of it as an old, reliable friend. Sometimes he would have occasional lapses in judgement, too much gambling, or forgetting a promise we had shared, but those instances were few and far between, and always forgivable. A hang of the head, a quick smile, and we would be ready to move on.

Now it's as if he decided that enough was enough. This China thing, you know, is asking quite a lot. More than your average favor. Can't be expected to handle all of it.

One of the teachers here, a New Zealander that I only knew as "Nook," recently left. Absconded. Peaced out. Right before the kids' monthly exams and a few weeks before the end of the semester. She lived below us, and would play her music loudly once every two weeks. Her TV exploded a month ago, and for days the smell of chemicals seeped through her roof (our floor) to permiate our apartment.

She taught in the elementary school, and seemed relatively content. Yet, last weekend, she managed to covertly slip away without anyone from the school noticing. A little blonde woman scurrying through the bushes.

Leaving in the middle of a contract is technically a crime, and the school has the right to stop you. In fact, Nook is now blacklisted by the Chinese government, and can no longer work in the country. If she's still in the country, she'll be held if found, if she's out, she can't return.

In some ways I can understand. The school, to say the least, has countless convoluted rules and regulations, many head-scratching policies that may or may not have anything to do with education, but we're here, and we agreed to work for ten-months, and kids are depending on us. Leaving isn't an option.

Besides, Shanghai has a dirty, confusing charm. It's affection can be easy, if you're willing to dive into the expat scene, or become the token laowai (literally "Old Whitie") for a group of Chinese friends (well, I can't do that one since it applies to only paler folk), or it can be hard earned by learning the language, and living life her like you normally would, but I like it here enough to stay for at least ten months, perhaps more even once we truly figure the city out.


Videos of last weeks ninth and tenth grade art festival coming up; you'll get to see some of my students in action, dancing inappropriately, and singing Chinese power ballads.

Shanghai Art Museum

Daily life in Shanghai isn't really all that different from back home. Work, dinner, a little tv, read a bit, then sleep. The specifics might be different, but the rhythm is the same.Every now and then though, we try to remember that we're not here in Shanghai just to work and watch three seasons of Ugly Betty in a week. Nope, there's more to Shanghai than dirty street food, futureland like malls, and grandmas pushing you out of the way (and sometimes out the door) on the bus. With that in mind, James, Stephanie, Nicole, and I went to the Shanghai Art Museum.This is outside the museum, which used to be the main hall of the old Shanghai horse racing club. Next to it is the new Shanghai.This steamtrain circa the Cultural Revolution was a part of the museum as well.What you don't see is that the large group of Chinese people taking pictures of us.This is inside the train.scary doll.Inside the museum was everything I have been missing since coming to Shanghai. Look, culture...art...opinion. Above is a miniature replica of a slummy apartment.The layout of the museum was strange, since it was forced into the space of a stately Victorian building.I took a picture of people taking pictures of themselves. A video of people passing by was projected onto the wall.In all, there was too much for me to post everything, but I'll put up a few highlights.

There were these crazy happy dinosaur people things.
Stephanie and Nicole getting into the dinos.
Nice foot action
oops, me getting carried away.


There was also this disco ball room, with voices speaking both English and Mandarin.

This is what the disco ball room looks like with the flash on.
Nicole and Steph dancing. That's James talking, I'm following them around with the camera.





a neat video in the museum. Hmmm, quite Chinese of me to secretly record this. Maybe I can sell it for 5 rmb on the street.
Outside the museum, in People's Park.Everything lights up in People's Square after dark.

The museum was exactly the kind of break we needed. It was just nice to be surrounded by art that was meant to challenge. Living here, it's easy to let our brains slowly decay, especially considering the simple material we're teaching. The museum was a kind of jolt to the synapses, like the ultra-sugar rush of shanghai sweets.

A haircut in China

Ok, so I was scolded for not updating the blog with enough words (hi DK). Here then, is a brief description of getting a haircut on Baise Lu, Shanghai.

November 25, Beijing standard time, I decided that enough was enough; I had to get a haircut in Shanghai. I had managed to avoid it thus far by sneaking in a haircut while in Singapore, but that was a month ago and my locks were getting a little too locky. I was, as my office-mates said, starting to "look very Chinese."

The first step was figuring out which salons were legitimate, because here there are hair salons, and there are "hair salons." Just on our block alone, there are at least seven salons, but I was only interested in the well-lit and large ones (no shady stained rooms please). I also remembered that one in particular had a good mix of male and female clientele, plus it was called Aiya, which I liked (it's an exclamation of surprise in Chinese). So Aiya it was.

Cole was supposed to back me up, but she died on the couch and couldn't get up. I was on my own. Ok. I got on my bike and rode out of the school, onto Baise Lu. It was 5:30 in the afternoon, and all of the night street vendors were out in force. I only had the fading dusk light to guide me in avoiding riding on the various blankets, socks, dvds, flatware (street flatware!), marinated eggs, etc....In addition, by then, all of the schools were out (we're surrounded by three other large schools besides Shanghai High School), and kids took to the sidewalk in that very chinese way of walking, otherwise known as the meandering, zombie-like shuffling wave. In the end, I walked with my bike to my side.

Enter Aiya, and four greeters welcome me, and then ask me....something. What? Um. Sorry, I don't speak Mandarin, I say in Mandarin, which only makes them not believe me. Er...I want a haircut, I say in Cantonese. They squint, and tilt their heads. I say it again and make a cutting motion with my fingers. Ah! Yes. Haircut.

After getting my hair washed (where I had to struggle through another very short and broken Mandarin conversation: I'm American, I teach at Shanghai High School, I've been here for three months, etc....), I make my way to another chair, where a guy with spiky, red-tinged hair (pretty much required here) started to comb my wet hair.

He pointed to a picture of a magazine. I looked at it, reasonable short hair, neat. Good enough. Ok, I say. He then tells me that it'll take a couple hours and cost 180 rmb. Um, maybe not. I still don't know what the process was, but I opted for a normal cut instead.

As the guy cuts my hair, four other Aiya employees crowd around me. Mandarin questions bombard me from all sides. I smile nervously, er...I don't understand I say. I try Cantonese, which confuses them even more. Then I tell them that I'm American.

One guy in particular gets up close to me, about an inch away, and says in English, "But you look Chinese." Sigh. Again, the concept of Chinese-American is too much. I won't go on too much longer about it, but in the end, the haircut was great, and it cost 15 rmb, or about $1.25

The whole experience was so odd, because, for the first time, I was the spectacle. Usually I can avoid it, but in the salon I was trapped, without cole to run interference (nothing is as distracting as a white person). In many ways, I was even more foreign to them then someone like Nicole. The people here literally cannot fathom that I'm from the United States. Most of them settle that I must be from Guangzhou or southern china, since I can speak Cantonese.

What else has happened? We just had our first lesson with our Mandarin tutor, and found out how little we really knew. In fact, right now all of our conversation skills revolve around food and transportation, and that's about it.

The teaching has been going well for the most part. Navigating through all of the rules that change every other month has been difficult, but the kids have been good. I've settled into this odd, older brother role with most of them, and some of them have even started to jump on me, which is what they do to each other and the Chinese teachers.

And that's about it. We're in the stretch with no vacation days for over a month. We don't even get Thanksgiving off, but tomorrow a group of us teachers will have dinner at The City Diner, which is an American restaurant. Cole covered our other China Thanksgiving (that we had last week) on her blog.

Next, I'll post some videos of the Shanghai Art Museum Biennial. Ack, I switched tenses again midway through my post. China is definitely deteriorating the writing.

A Minute of Waiting

Here's another glimpse into our daily lives; waiting for the bus along the street.

This is right around the corner from the school. I always expected that the locals would be used to foriegners because of the whole international school thing (and it's shanghai after all, the most westernized city in china), but here non-asian faces are few and far between. nicole's pretty much used to the staaaaaaaring, but here's what it's like to stand by a bus stop. I think that day was a not-awful pollution day.

Xujiahua park in the morning

A week ago, cole and I walked through the nearby Xujiahua park. Here are some of the sights and sounds:






that blue thing is the mascot for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. I think the World Expo is similar to the World Fair, except fancier.

Fabric market and street grub

Awhile back, nicole and I went to the fabric market to buy new coats. Inside (the fabric market is indoors) are endless rows of booths filled with bolts of fabric stacked high above your head, and coats, suites, dresses, even pajamas hanging from all angles.

Actually, I went in with absolutely no intention on buying a new coat, but then as I walked past one of the booths, I stopped and looked at a jacket. Big mistake. The lady working the booth ensnared me immediately. "Try on. You try on."
"Um, I'm just looking."
"Try on. Try." At this point she has the jacket off the mannequin and is wrapping it around my shoulders.
"Really, I'm not looking to buy a new coat."
She slips my arms in the sleeves, and starts pushing me toward the mirror.
"Go look."
"Really. I'm not...hmmm" I catch my reflection and pause. Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, I rather like it. Oh no, now she knows I like it. There goes one bargaining chip.

Five minutes later, I'm getting measured for my very own black cashmere coat. Oh well. Now, if it'll only get cold enough in Shanghai for me to wear it.


Here is me surprising cole with picture. I even used the flash. We're such tourists.

The entrance of the fabric market.

Outside of the market were many many street vendors because the fabric market is a popular destination for those crazy white folk.
Me on my china cell phone. These days my hair is even longer; I can even comb it.

Also outside of the market, just a street to the right, underneath a highway overpass, was amazing street food. I'm pretty sure these were vegetable dumplings, but considering how good they were, I don't really care what was inside. These cost us 3 rmb for six, something like 40 cents.

To go with the dumplings we had made-to-order chow fun from this cart. I didn't catch all of the ingredients but it was something like, flat noodles, soy sauce, oil, an egg, sprouts, three kinds of spices, two scoops of msg, and a spinach-like veggie topping.
Mmmm....
The msg did make us really thirsty though. Nothing that funny tasting china diet coke couldn't wash away.
That night, cole and I went to Best Buy (yes, they have a Best Buy in Shanghai, the only one in China) and I couldn't help but play their Hello Kitty guitar. I am seriously considering buying it because there just isn't anything like this back home.

In my free time, I've taken to learning how to play anime theme songs. The two latest have been Naruto season 2 theme, and Beck. I know, I know, such a dork, and china is definitely not helping in that respect.

I'll leave you with this video of cole and me in our new coats. The lighting is our horrible industrial dorm lighting (we have nice soft white bulbs now, courtesy of ikea lamps) so we're not looking our best. I also can't seem to act not embarrassing. It's a talent I have.

Autumn in Shanghai

Hey there, the extended absence is due to the fact that midterms are upon us. not only that, but fall has actually arrived, and my sweaters are being dug out from the boxes that they were hidden in. yesterday, it even reached the upper 50s.

Here are some photos of the school these days:

We've had some gloomy, rainy weather for awhile. This is the pond outside of the junior high.

Right outside of our building. Where we park our bikes before getting into the office.

They've been doing a lot of construction at the school; tearing down old buildings to make room for news one. The latest victim was a building that was actually used as a prison during WWII. Our school was a Japanese internment camp, and the movie Empire of the Sun was based on the school's real history.

The school hallway after all the kids have left for the day. Usually it is impossible to walk through these. You basically have to swim your way through the kids.

The classroom where I have three of my classes: English, history, and Ecology.

So, I was talking about midterms before. Midterms here are really involved, with all sorts of rules and regulation. Every test has to be a certain way, and handed in with the right identifying codes and information, but at least the hard part is over now.

Today, in the spirit of halloween, I showed my kids Nightmare Before Christmas, and at first some of them rolled their eyes. oh we're too big for this. oh that's just for children, but once the movies starts...bam, they're glued to the screen. completely captivated.

Life is moving along. When I sit down and recount our adventures it seems a little lame. So much of it revolves around finding a burrito or a normal deli sandwich, but you don't understand. When one eats Chinese cafeteria food five days a week, dreams of other kinds of food start to encroach into both your sleeping and waking hours. And that turkey sandwich that you took for granted, the one with the perfect round roll and cheddar, you start to obsess about it. And pizza. And tacos. and...well, you get the idea.

So, because of our cravings, we've gone on a lot of food hunts. One main trip was to New York Deli. With a name like that, how could we resist. The ad in a magazine promised that they carried "US quality meat" and I was sold.

The deli turned out to be a small counter next to Jing'ling Road, where we bought our guitars a few weeks ago (and by-they-way, I've been playing my guitar like crazy. Just like being sixteen again. I even remember how to play Crash and The Sweater Song...good times).

They also had very good giant burritos. Stephanie couldn't finish hers so she carried it around her purse the entire day, even when we went to the museum later on. Occasionally, she would peek into her bag and coo to the burrito, whispering loving words to it.

Stephanie, Nicole, and Mai Kao. Apparently it was jeans and black t-shirt day.

Serious eating.The deli crowd. Me, Mai Kao, Josh, Brian L., Stephanie, Dennis C., Dennis N. (yes, there really are three Den(n)is's here), and Brian W.)

Some street meat prepping. Actually, you can't see, but all around were people chopping up all types of critters outside, which would later be used for the meals cooked for dinner. Um, nevermind the pollution and fly marinade.

After the deli, Nicole, Stephanie, and I walked to the Shanghai National Museum (I think...we were trying to find the Shanghai Modern Art Museum, but stumbled into the wrong one).

The walk to the museum. It was a nice day. Oh, note the couple in front of us. People here hang all over each other, literally. Not that much public kissing though.

Outside of the museum.

There were people all around the museum selling these squid kites. They would walk up to any group of white people and say, "Buy my kite, buy my kite." All the tourists were too polite and would stand there suffering as the hawkers moved on to watches and other trinkets.

They tried to sell kites to Nicole and Stephanie too, but I think my presence deterred them in the end. I'm like Chinese-hawker kryptonite. Except for maybe the ones who think I'm Japanese. When that happens it's usually these women saying, "Why don't you talk to us? You Japanese? Why so unfriendly? You like KTV (karaoke)? Go art show?"

Lion statues outside of the museum.

Inside the museum were all sorts of exhibits, but we couldn't take pictures of most. I was, however, allowed to snap photos of the different kinds of Chinese money. These pictures are for you Mr. Barriale, coin-collector extradinaire.

After the museum, we hiked through the busiest street ever while looking for a Japanese clothing score. Sometimes there are just too many people here.

Another night, a group of teachers had a barbeque. We ate China steaks and you know what? It was pretty good. I wasn't sure how long they needed to cook so I probably overdid it, but they were still relatively tender and tasty.
Action shot. cole playing wii tennis with josh and brian.

It was a great night. Crisp air. Smoke of the grill. People talking and laughing together. And one giant sing along that included weezer, oasis, and radiohead classics.

One last food report is our trip to New York Pizza (hmm, new york deli, new york pizza, I'm starting to see a trend here).
Outside, there was some kind of Russian folk dance show going on.


The pizza really was like New York pizza, and it tasted just like the two slices and a small coke special I used to get for $4 at that place near NYU, on University Place. So ok, not the greatest pizza, but perfectly acceptable greasy slice, which for China is like, in the top 5% of pizzas.

Decent pizza=happy times.


Yum. Oh yeah, all that weight I lost by being so nervous at the start of teaching? I'm pretty sure I'm well on my way to fixing that.

That's all for now. Sorry for the clunky writing; sometimes I feel my ability to express myself coherantly slip away as I teach all these kids with inverted and mixed engrish grammar. I'll try to get the rest of Singapore up next.