Recording my life in Shanghai for posterity - AM

I've been uploading photos today and a few photos have inspired me to blog about them. Usually I'm pretty wordy and not as much a photo + writing person, but I realised that I like reading posts with pictures so I should try it out myself.
The picture below is a group shot of my 初二班一 (chu er ban yi) class, specifically comprehensive reading/grammar.



In the middle in the beige knit and glasses is my (and everyone else's) favourite teacher, Anna. It would be tough teaching such a boring topic (Chinese grammar) from a pretty mediocre textbook, but you could really tell she enjoyed teaching and she prepared in depth for her classes (which our speaking teacher CLEARLY did not). As a result you get students who actually want to come to class and who engage in the materials. I'm lucky I had her as my teacher because grammar, reading and writing are tougher to learn on your own. Speaking and listening can be learnt more easily and probably more efficiently just by watching TV, listening to music and going out and talking to Chinese people.

[Can you tell that I'm finding it tough writing from a photograph? It's a bit restrictive and making me overly descriptive as opposed to analytical (or critical) which I suppose I am. I think I keep switching points of view/tense too...]

A lot of my classmates are from Asian countries, with the exceptions being myself, Michelle (one of the girls directly behind me is also an Aussie) and the two non-Asians in the picture (German). Koreans and Japanese make up most of the international student population at Jiaotong University, which makes sense because of the proximity of both countries to China (Shanghai in particular being on the coastline) and the business between the countries.

It ends up being fairly important which class you end up in, because unless you have a lot of extracurricular activities or you're extremely outgoing I think that these are the people that you end up being friends with. Luckily for me, I liked most of the people in my class (besides a few that never spoke - possibly because they didn't speak English and very little Chinese) and made a few friends too. I know some people in other classes weren't as lucky to have such a sociable bunch of classmates.



I'm especially lucky because I had classmates who liked to go to lunch with me after class so I had lunch buddies! Most days at least one of these two lovely ladies ate with me (plus others) and ate a lot of food around the Xujiahui and Fanyu road area. My favourite has to be the Japanese place on Xinhua road that does tasty and filling "business lunch boxes" during the day (with yummo chawanmushi - steamed egg) and all you can eat and drink at night. You can't go wrong with a recommendation for Japanese FROM a Japanese right?

And that's my daytime life. Classes and food. Exciting huh?

Chinese banana girl

I found this really good Chinese learning website, and I was listening to some of the podcasts. There was a particularly interesting one on overseas Chinese which mentioned a term I'd never heard before but think is amazing: "egg". Hah, that made me laugh. I guess that's white on the outside, yellow on the inside? As opposed to banana, which is me, mostly. Although I guess I'd describe myself as a Chinese banana - yellow on the outside, white on the inside, but with a Chinese flavour (and of course made in China). I think that pretty much sums it up.

The whole topic of overseas Chinese is a really interesting one, and I couldn't even begin to discuss it. At least not in a blog. I think it's much more organic and would flow more freely in a conversation. My 口语 kouyu (spoken Chinese) teacher said to my class mate and me that she finds it difficult to think of ways to keep the class interested in the lessons. In my head I thought "well that's obvious", but externally I said "well that's to be expected. The levels of spoken Chinese in this class are too low for decent conversations on most topics, and yet we're all old enough that we don't want to be discussing the baby topics that we could converse on using what we've learnt" (that's not really an exact translation of what I said, but you know, it's what I was trying to say, with a bit of me adding a bit of extra ME into the words that I find more difficult/impossible when I'm speaking Chinese).

I think I may have complained on this blog before about my classes here in Shanghai, but for me I believe the biggest problem is that I'm in this extremely odd space where my spoken, listening and reading/writing skills are ALL different. Listening is the best for me, and spoken is a little way behind (I'm paying for all the time I spent responding to my parents in English when they spoke to me in Chinese), and reading/writing further behind that. I didn't get my act together and fix that when I could so now it's pretty much what I've gotten myself lumped with.

I know from speaking to other students that they also find the classes similarly unstimulating. It is very repetitive learning a language, so I understand that it's not going to be a barrel of laughs. But, like learning anything, a lot hinges on your teachers. If they can get you excited about what you're learning, however dull the grammar structure is that you're learning, then I think you've got a good 'un on your hands. My reading teacher is like that. She teaches us some of the most boring stuff, and yet somehow makes it interesting. Just a natural talent for teaching I guess. Combined with an interest in helping students learn.

I think if she taught all my classes, and if I was in the right level for everything, I could really learn a lot here. As it is, I've surprised myself with how far I've come. I guess I didn't think that I was learning a lot, but in a way, I've gained a lot of knowledge that is now in my brain swimming around somewhere. Chinese isn't like a lot of other languages, because it has so many different words, so you just have to memorise things. There's no way out of it.

I think I'll start listening to more of the podcasts (there are a lot) and supplement my class learning.

http://www.chinesepod.com

Settling in - life in Shanghai

No posts for a bit as I lost my initial excitement about having proper access to internet to a certain extent. Am still using it a lot, but more for watching TV (oh how I love thee Project Runway) than for anything else. I'm sitting here drinking tea and eating a cookie and loading an episode of Project Runway, season 5. Not as good as season 4, not even close, as the designers on this season seem to lack... talent. That's a bit harsh coming from someone who struggles to sew in a straight line (I can do buttons though!) but it's true. Where did they find these people? No Christians, Ramis, Jillians or Victoryas in THIS round up. They were going for "diversity" of designers - in terms of style and race it seems - but they ended up with a lot of people who don't have great taste and some who don't seem that good at even basic garment construction! Wonky seams, badly sewn etc.

An overview of my daily life in Shanghai:
- Wake up early, having been awoken by the noisy tones of my grandparents making desultory morning conversation, but in very loud voices as they're both a bit deaf. Sweet sounds of birds chirping it is not. Birds chirping is also way overrated, I'd rather have silence. Oh sweet silence. My grandparents are very noisy people. When they talk, it's loud, almost yelling. When they watch TV, the sound is way up. And every afternoon they play mah jong and then there are 5 old people sitting there being deaf and loud and when they "wash" the tiles (kind of like when you shuffle cards) it's a cacaphony of loud exclamations (of "oh my cards were so terrible" or "oh i was just waiting on this one") and the tiles clanking against each other repeatedly.

- Eat breakfast (usually rice porridge and some small items like pickles, tofu and preserved vegetables) and then walk to class. Except for Wednesdays when I have afternoon class, yes! Sleep in! Although my noisy grandparents wake me up early, they go out to buy the daily groceries which gives me about an hour of blissfully silent sleep.

- Class lasts for a bit over 3 hours, in blocks of 1.5 hours each and a 20 minute break in between. I've started to make some friends in my class and through them met a couple of others which is nice. I went out to a couple of bars (not very good ones I must admit) and ended up slightly hungover on Wednesday afternoon. I think the cocktails here must have some extra poison in them, I only had one cocktail and one beer and should NOT have been feeling that bad the next day.
We have three types of classes: kouyu (speaking), tingli (listening) and the intensive reading course (can't remember the name in Chinese!). My reading course by far is the best as the teacher is very good at her job. She keeps you involved, and even if it is not exactly interesting perse (I mean it's just reading new words, reading passages about unexciting topics like fixing bicycles and being sick etc, and learning grammar structures) but I certainly feel like I want to learn with her. Listening teacher is also not too bad, but we move too slowly I feel. That's partly because I should be in a higher class but you're meant to do everything all on the same level and I'm too lazy to argue about it. Sometimes it's just easier following the rules here. Speaking is stupid, as we don't spend much time speaking, just reading the passages after the teacher. She's a really nice lady, but not much of a teacher so far. Looks like she might be improving, but time will tell.

- Lunch: I was eating this with my grandparents but now have eaten with classmates a couple of times. Both times Japanese! Curry and then ramen. I really want sushi though. Haven't yet scoped out the best places to eat. The area that my university is in is not as cheap as it's fairly central, but my grandparents said there are some good places around. Chinese is the cheapest of course, should eat more of that!

- Then the rest of the day I spend studying and watching TV online (yes, at the same time - although you need to study a fair amount, it doesn't need THAT much brain power).

Overall not hugely exciting, and I've never really been a fan of stability/routine, but that's what it's like here. My grandparents are very big on routine (they're old) so my life gets a little structured around them, and also around classes. They've got a bit of a salsa scene here which I am hoping to look into (found some links to it via Facebook - oh the beauty of FB!) and that should give me a bit of excitement in my life!