Shanghaied

Hey gang. I must first apologize for the delay of my first post. I fortunately was not shanghaied, but have been extraordinarily busy since my arrival. Not to mention the fact that I've been having various technical difficulties with the internet. For some odd reason, I can receive emails, but have had not success in sending them. My gmail account seems defunct, so I'm going to try to switch over to my hotmail account. Hopefully I'll find it to be more successful. md_oberg@hotmail.com Secondly, I can post on my blog (assuming you're reading this) but I can't view the actual page, or any of your comments (Yay communism!). Please, don't let that keep you from commenting for i shall read them eventually, but don't don't think ill of me if I fail to respond to a comment. I shall try to make up my absence with a very long post today. Hold on to your butts.

This is the beautiful city of Shanghai. A city of incredibly sights and sounds, and unbearable heat and smells... and even more unbearable cabbies. It rained the evening I arrive, an unfortunate omen for the week to come. I've never been one to shy away from rain, especially warm rain, but when it burns your skin and turns your white clothes wierd colors I tend to draw the line. Shanghai is an exceptionally metropolitan city. Apparently it was one of the most exciting cities in all of Asia pre 1950's. (Yay communism again!) After a half a century hiatus from the party scene, Shanghai is starting to emerge once again as "the place to be in China". I have to admit, never have I been to a city quite like this one. If there are two things I've learned about Shanghai so far it's this: you can't take ten steps without someone trying to sell you a fake rolex and they are obsessed with the Brazilian soccer star Rhonaldino. I mean, the guy is practically a soccer god, but the amount of billboards graced by his face are inumerable. Maybe they like him because he has even worse teeth than they do.... and that's saying a lot.

These are two of my flat mates....and me. Jen is from the Bay area and Chris is a brit, but we still like him anyways. Actually, since this is an english organization, us Americans are outnumbered by the English, which is fine with us. We just get to rub July 4th into more peoples' faces ;). They are a lot of fun though. We go out almost every evening and spend the weekends touring around the city. All of the volunteers generally spend time together. There is usually a group of about 20 of us that go out in the evenings for dinner and drinks and the occasional disco or karaoke. Unfortunately this proves to become rather expensive between the food, drinks, cover charges and cab fares. But it's fun nonetheless. However, since I have 3 months ahead of me in this country, I should start going out in moderation. When we're not out, we bought extremely inexpensive (and probably illegal) copies of tv show series. We've all been addicted to the show House, Arrested Development and Grays Anatomy, all splendid. In this picture, the girl on the left, Gemma, is also living in my flat. She is, as well, English. She's incredibly entertaining. The one on the right is French Anne. She's french, in case the name wasn't explicit enough. Unfortunately, Gemma is leaving in a week. Since everyone is here for different lengths of time, with different starting and leaving dates, the turn over rate is extraordinarily high. People are constantly coming and going. It's great to constantly be meeting new people, but sad that the ones I've become good friends with have to leave.


This past Sunday, my flat mates and I (and two others) took a day trip to the city of Hangzhou. It's a lake city and is supposedly one of the prettiest places around. When we got off the train, we headed straight to the Lingyin Temple. This is a picture of the hillside outside the temple. There was a small cave/tunnel system amidst the rocks with dozens upon dozens of other fantastic carvings like these.
This statue was inside one of the buildings of the Lingyin Temple. I believe that it is the protector of mankind, holding a dragon in one hand and a piece of fruit in the other... I think. This statue was big and I mean big. I was only about a foot taller than that wood banister in front of him. Also in this temple complex was the tallest statue in all of the Chinese Buddhist temples. It was 36 meters tall. I neglected to take a photo however because I didn't want to disturb the multitude of Chinese Buddhists praying. I also neglected to take a photo of the outside of any of the buildings in the complex.... I have no good reason for why not. fortunately for me, almost all of the temples look the same! So I'll get pictures from ones later on, and you'll get the general idea.

After the temple and a bite to eat, we went to the lake. It's a beautiful lake about a mile in diameter. After taking a shot walk along the lakes edge. We managed to haggle a boatman down to an acceptable price and set off in the lake. This was a quaint little boat power only by a single oar and the boatman's muscles. It was a very pleasant ride. In this photo is Gemma, Ling and Ras (and the boatman in the back). Chris, Jen and I are sitting on the other side and there is a small table separating both sides which people often dine on. It would be a great place for a date.

He paddled us out to a small island in the lake called The Island of Small Seas, which actually had small lakes within the island. The lake was doubley awesome because it gave us a chance too cool off in the swealtering heat. He then dropped us off on the other side of lake and we took a nice walk along the causeway, which was a small strip of land cutting through a portion of the lake, during sunset. The day couldn't have been more perfect... except for the heat and humidity.

That's all for now. I'll update again soon, I promise. Now that I'm settled I should post with a greater frequency. Maybe next I'll give you a virtual tour of my flat and the area around, write about my place of work, or just complain about the grastrointestinal distress I get from the food. Who knows! It's a crap shoot.... maybe that wasn't the best word choice. I'll hopefully upload more pictures in later posts, this slow connection takes forever to upload photos. I'm currently leeching wireless internet from a router near my flat, it's slow but free. Stay tuned for more updates. I miss and love you all.