Leaving on a jet plane

Well, my time in Shanghai is slowly drawing to an end. In the last week, I've grown totally attached to the city, and am more than a little sad to leave it behind. I don't feel like I live here, but I do feel like I'm somewhat rooted here, the most rooted that I've been in the last 3 months say. Speaking of rooted, I now have an apartment in New York City as well, so the details of my life beyond China are slowly coming together.
This last week has been a lot of socializing and somewhat minimal on the sightseeing. A friend that some of the other teachers and I share came in on Tuesday and spent the week with us. We took him to the Old City and looked around at all the different things one can buy here. Pretty crazy. It would be fun to decorate an apartment here, but there's also so many things that I can't imagine anyone is ever going to buy. The bargaining is fun, particuarly when you have multiple people, because you really play with the shopkeepers. They know their game too, they tell you "You're very severe. You kill me. This is real jade/ivory/artifact/etc". Then you give them a price, they give you one higher, you say no, I won't pay that. You start to walk off, they lower it, and usually you can get it for what you offered them. We got thrown out of one place though; evidently the woman was insulted by our offer.
I ate dinner at the Schafer's house (Uncle Paul and Aunt Laura's friends) the other night. I was picked up at my dormitory in a Silver Benz and transported to an apartment with a gorgeous skyline view of the sun setting over Shanghai. Beautiful sight. Dinner was great; it was wonderful to eat home cooked food again, particuarly the vegetables and meat that Brenda had selected. We watched a little TV afterwards; funny how something as familiar as just sitting on a couch in front of a tv seemed so strange to me.
My Chinese is also coming along, just a little bit. I managed to communicate that I'd like my groceries double bagged the other day. I ordered a mango drink yesterday that was amazing (My new strategy is to walk up to the juice/tea places, ask if they have mango, and then if they say something besides "we don't have it" (which I understand), then I ask for a large). I can't say things like, "What is your name?", but I can ask for the room key, tell a cab driver "Stop here", say "Why", "Teacher", "Ice", "Heart", "Yes or no", "Want it or not?" "To be or not to be?", "Ok", "I love only you" (uhhhh, there is a back story to that: I've become obsessed with a couple of Chinese pop songs and have learned a few lyrics. Have not needed to use that phrase, though the word "only" is a useful one to know.)
I don't think I've bragged about my students enough recently. We had a series of debates on Monday that were just wonderful. I was blown away to the point where I was having a hard time containing myself from getting up and leaping around in excitement. The best was one about whether China should legalize prostitution. My students managed to articulate their ideas incredibly well, and they hit all the major points and philosophical arguments that both schools of thought usually use. The most amazing thing to me though, as someone who has had this debate and similar ones more than a few times, was how evident it was that guys here (at least my students) have a deep seated respect for women. Gender equality is much more apparent here than anywhere I've ever been. Though there is a conception of a woman's duties and a man's duties, and those obligations differ, there's no sense that one set of responsibilities is more important than the other, and the boundaries are generally more fluid than a lot of the ones present in American society. It's something I've gotten used to here and really like about this culture.
Also, to uphold my tradition of eating anything my students put on my plate, I ate chicken foot the other night. Yummmmm. You have to spit out the nails and everything. I really wish I could see your faces right now. . . . .
Last night, all the teachers went out as a group to celebrate the end of the program and start to say goodbye. I've made a lot of good friends here, and will definitely be keeping in touch with a few individuals in the coming years. Nicole and I made awards for everyone; they were pretty goofy, but I think it was a fitting way to end the trip.

We're getting on a plane in a few hours. Eating lunch with a girl from Yale who's interested in doing AIDS work in Africa. Should be a lively conversation! Hopefully I just don't get so carried away that I run out of time to come back and pack!