You are my superstar

After a somewhat long week, I had a fantastic weekend. A few people in our group were sick most of last week, so there was a lot of juggling of classes (I had 16 students for two days; that was tough!) and a lot of additional stress, not to mention our group felt small the times we did go out. I'm sort of reaching that point where I'm tired of sightseeing all the time. I'm happy to prowl the streets and peek into stores and alleyways, but actually going somewhere just to look at something is getting a little old after 6 weeks of it!
I met up with one of Uncle Paul and Aunt Laura's friends, Brenda, on Wednesday, and she took me to an antique market that was off the main tourist track. They had a lot of really interesting stuff, and they had a pretty relaxed attitude about bargaining, which was nice. I enjoyed the place so much that I went back yesterday with a friend from the group and bought some more stuff, including some pictures of Shanghai from like the 1930s that I really like. I've also been trying to find a necklace here--jade is really popular and I had my heart set on a dragon, which I hadn't been able to find--and in the Dong Tai Lu market, I found a jade necklace with a silver phoenix (Feng Wah, like the Chinatown bus!) that satisfied me completely.
Brenda and I also went to a really nice tea house, China Reading Room, that served as a library currently and for many years past. It sort of reminded me of Paradigm cafe, although it was a bit more formal. It had the same sort of big couches and little nooks where you could sit and talk for hours. Dinner was also great; we went to a restaurant next to the Ritz Carlton that served extremely fresh food, including an amazing salad. I can't believe I used to strongly dislike salad; I took two bites of this one and realized that I wasn't fooling anyone with all my valiant efforts to pretend I didn't miss American food! Conversation was also as satisfying as the food; interesting to hear the perspectives and observations of an ex-pat and compare them to what my students tell me. Also, now that I'm toying with the idea of living abroad in the future, interesting to hear about the international community and how one avoids loneliness in that situation.
Friday, we showed our students Shawshank Redemption. A few of them had seen it before and were really excited about seeing it again. I'm interested to hear what they think it reflects about American culture and our criminal justice system; personally, I am not too keen on the movie, but it's certainly one that may inspire a pretty interesting conversation in my class. The other highlight of the day was that they convinced me to try duck blood soup: I ate stomach, intestines and congealed blood without so much as a grimace. Not sure it's a food I intend to make a habit of!
Friday night, I went back to Cloud Nine, the bar on the top of the Hilton, with my group. We got there in time for sunset, but the afternoon had become rather cloudly and we ended up with what looked like a view of Gotham City right out of Batman. It was great to sit and watch the city slowly light up. The downtown area is so condensed that it's easy to forget that 17 million people live here and it spans a long, long way. We ended the night with dinner at an Italian place (no offense to the Chinese, but the only food that I've found that they consistently do well is chinese food), and then watched Fast and the Furious 2: Tokyo Drift, which was immensely satisfying.
Saturday, Nicole and I headed to some of the towns on the outskirts of Shanghai. We took a bus out to Jiading, where there is a beautiful and well-kept Confucius temple with 72 lions and a large collection (72) of golden statues of Confucius' favorite students. There's also a beautiful lake next to the temple, along with some good restaurants. I spent a lot of time looking at the old calligraphy on stone tables in the temple; I find the pictures at once beautiful and so mysterious.
After exploring Jiading, we headed south to Nanxiang, which is where the restaurant that invented Xiao Long Bau (dumpling with soup and meat inside) is situated. We heartily enjoyed a big plate of those, along with some very interesting rosemary tea. Every one was extremely friendly and good-natured; it was definitely time for a breather from the city at this point! At one point, Nicole said, wow it's soooo quiet here, and I agreed, and then we realized that half a block away from us a guy was using a jackhammer. After 2 weeks in Shanghai though, that was nothing!
Sunday, I headed back to Dong Tai Lu in the morning, and then got lunch at the Nanxiang Steamed Bun restuarant in old town Shanghai. They have great wonton soup and xiao long bau. The place is extremely crowded, and you have to stake out a table and then stare down the people eating there. We ended up with two other families, who were mildly impressed with our chopstick skills (and mainly didn't see us dropping our xiao long bau into our soup!!).
Sunday afternoon and evening was definitely the highlight of my time here. Nicole and I went karaoke singing with a bunch of my students, and it was SOOOOO fun. They are all incredible singers with no inhibitions about getting up and singing, so we had a great time. Their knowledge of English songs is pretty different than ours (Have y'all ever heard of a boy band called West Life? Or Blue?), but we managed to find some backstreet boys, michael jackson, britney spears, and spice girls that we can all relate to. Nicole and I have also become totally obsessed with this pop song called "Superstar" by a Taiwanese girl group called S.H.E. Singing in Chinese is kind of like singing acapella for me; it's all about memorizing nonsensical syllables. Singing karaoke however sets up a very strong incentive to learn characters, so I think I may have to do it more often because it really teaches me a lot!
After karaoke, my students steered us to a japanese restaurant where we had a fully satiating meal of noodles, chicken, squid, and octopus. They really don't go easy on me!

Hard to believe I have to leave in a week. I think that there might be tears shed at the final ceremony on Friday!