My experience here has been nothing short of amazing. The people, the city, the job, the culture...everything was incredibly great.
I'd like to thank some people specifically, for their great support and help that allowed me to enjoy this amazing opportunity: my parents, Grandma Conway, Aunt Wendy, Kelly, the Berry's, Sra. Martin, Dr. Wu, John, and anyone else who I may have missed. I very much appreciate the assistance, you've all allowed me to prepare and indulge in a once in a lifetime opportunity and I cannot thank you enough!!
Here are some things that I will and will not miss about Shanghai ;-) ...
Will miss:
- The brewery (when/where will I get free beer and food for an extended period of time!?...uggh)
- The lack of enforcement for traffic laws (constant speeding and red light running, my kind of driving)
- Learning and speaking Chinese (I'm doubtful that i'll maintain any kind of conversational or educational furthering of the language in the near future...sad)
- The helpful personality of Chinese people (sorry, but Americans just aren't as willing to help those in need!
- Street food (late night street food is the best here in Shanghai)
- Shanghai nightlife
- 'English Magic' (it's a phone number that you dial, basically a 411 (but it's free). They know all there is to know about the city of Shanghai...street addresses, directions, operating hours of stores/shops/restaurants, etc. They're main purpose is to tell your taxi driver how to get to where you want to go if the driver doesn't know. It's something that I think every big city should have - it makes life easy)
- The cleanliness (Shanghai seems to be a very clean city...there are people cleaning the streets 24/7 with brooms, and street-cleaning trucks drive around all the time, it's very impressive)
- The people (I've made some incredibly connections during my 3 months here, it has been wonderful meeting great people from all over the world, people I'll never forget)
- Bargaining the price of merchandise (this is something that the U.S needs to adopt...fake or just plain cheap stuff that can be bargained to declare a fair price)
Won't miss:
- Often finding myself in a state of confusion
- Doing sign language (sometimes my Chinese skills just don't hold up!)
- Feeling like people are yelling when really they're just speaking in normal conversation (Some Chinese tones can often come off as loud and obnoxious)
- Pulped juice (the Chinese don't believe in no pulp...only fully loaded pulp)
- Food served in bags (often, Chinese food is served in a bag, so you might get a bag of noodles and you're expected to eat out of the bag...very interesting)
- Shop owners literally pulling me into their store (some people just really want you to buy their stuff)
- Chinese food (granted, a lot of it is great stuff, but it rarely fills me up. I often find myself longing for more about 30 min after I've eaten a ton)
- 'China Cold' (beer and other beverages served at room temperature, or warmer)
- Pushing (a city with over 20 million people has crowded streets and subway stations...pushing is quite common)
- Space invasion (crowded subways = people in your face)
- Curious Chinese (they're always looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing on my phone/ipod/computer...often annoying!)
- The little things that make life much easier...fast internet, good peanut butter, drinkable tap water, and much more.
Posting on this blog has been a lot of fun for the past 3 months, and I hope it has given you a chance to kind of 'see' what I've been up to over here on the other side of the world!
Thanks to anyone and everyone who has kept up with my blog!!!
Pat, OUT.
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PMM
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