Orienting to Shanghai Part 1: I Make Things difficult

It has been far too long since I updated this. Seriously, the last three weeks have felt like years, I just have been doing too much to sit and write about it. Lets start from the top:

- After one of the worst travel days ever (as I mentioned earlier), I rolled into Beijing completely delirious. Turns out that after spending a night barely asleep on a train that should have been moving, failing at paying for a taxi, taking another train, metroing to the airport, and taking two flights totaling 19 hours, I gave the wrong passport to customs in Beijing before traveling to Shanghai. They gave me a temporary 1-day travel visa... which was about 299 days too short. I've heard there will be days like these, I'll take them if they only come once every 23 years.

(Sidenote: I can’t give my dad enough props for actually getting me to Shanghai. I thought I could get by without calling him and without any money [dumb] so by the time I called him it was about 3:00AM in Sudbury. And even though he was probably 90% asleep, he still got me a better deal than the 343€ cab ride I couldn’t afford. I consider myself pretty resourceful, but it doesn’t hurt that I share genes with the best resource in the world. Love you dad [oh yeah and I still messed it up...])

At the airport, I meet Sean and Andy, who will be working with me at Shanghai Foreign Language School (SFLS). Sean is from Rome, NY; Andy’s from Western Virginia (not to be confused with West Virginia). We’ve created a triumvirate of sorts to conquer this city, the language, and the women (just kidding... but seriously).

So I got there, but the hotel notified me that I could be deported if I didn’t do anything about my situation. Crap.

- QingQing Zhao became my Guardian Angel in China. As the leader of the Marshall TEFL course, she took it upon herself to legalize my stay in this country. We traveled by Metro, bus, taxi, and even motorcycle taxi (don't worry mom they provided helmets) to travel throughout Shanghai to talk to various officials, who would tell me to leave the country and re-enter instead of taking any reasonable course of action. After much ado, we're finally given the perfectly bureaucratic compromise of "you don't need to leave the country, but you do need to go to Beijing to sort things out - and no we're not going to pay for it for you." Without QingQing, I'd probably have had to pull an all-nighter flying out to Korea/Vietnam/Hong Kong and right back in, which would have been costly on two levels: monetarily and it would've added two more airline food meals to my diet (and there's only so many of those you're body is allowed each lifetime). On the plus side I got to go to Beijing!

- On the downside, I got to see Beijing. Before then, I kept catching myself comparing Shanghai to my Beijing experience: i.e. "that's cool/fun/sweet/interesting, but when I was in Beijing... it was so much better/bigger/tastier/awesomer!" So I needed to go back to revisit, see how it was holding up.

The trip really ended up being a breakup between me and the city. The smog was lighter than I remembered, but the sun was still very hazy. The traffic was awful and the streets were filthy. All the little things that I was willing to brush under the rug to have one of the best experiences of my life (and a pinnacle moment for Beijing as well). But the worst part was while I moved on with my life, it was still clinging to the past. The trains still showed re-runs of old Olympic events and the announcements on the trains still reminded volunteers where to get off. People still watered the flowers and kept up the stadiums. The carnival fled town, but left behind the ferris wheel and the merry-go-round. The people didn't excitedly talk to me on the train when I got on (to be fair I wasn't wearing my Beijing jersey, and it was rush hour on a Monday afternoon). We did relive the old times though. I had noodles from Master Kong's Soup Kitchen, with Tongue, Tripe, and Tendon. I remembered all the fantastic times I had there. Someday I'll go back, but hopefully in a few years after things have finally passed.

At least the breakup allowed me to move on. I'm a Shanghai man now and I can now fully focus on the present without comparing it too much with what was really a surreal once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I got my visa fixed, which I guess was important too.

...

So this entry was a little negative, but I feel that it was necessary to endure some pain and hardships to fully initiate into Shanghai. This all basically happened within the first week, I'll try to have another post or two up about my first three weeks while I'm on this three day weekend (from Wednesday-Friday, I'll cover that in a future post).

I've received a tremendous amount of support from people about the blog, many of whom I had no idea read it! I added a followers tab to the right, please sign up for that. Not only because I love knowing who actually reads the blog, but also because if I know who I'm letting down, I'm more likely to post more often. Thanks everybody!