So between my trip to Canada and starting summer school at the university [I'm taking Upper Intermediate Finnish Level 1 and 2], I took a little detour through Shanghai for 9 days. I was accompanied by my wonderful boyfriend and we flew out June 20th and returned June 29th. I recently wrote Averie the most detailed e-mail about the trip and I thought I'd use that as the basis for this post...
"Let me try and convey to you what's been going on lately... Alright SO: after I got back from Canada, which I already told you about, I had 2 days to prep for that interview, which I also told you about, at Jyvaskyla University. For some reason it was pretty stressful to wake up around 5am and drive to a city that I'd been to before but didn't know my way around at all. Luckily, the university is right off the main road between Tampere and Jyvaskyla so not quite a highway [there's only one in Finland and it leads to Helsinki] but a main road connecting cities nonetheless. I'm sure they have similar things in Africa. After that day, I thought I would get to relax until China but then I had completely forgotten about a conference that I'd volunteered for. The theme was Business Ethics and it was a 3 day event run by the Management Studies Department at Tampere University. I met about a dozen people while working there... all Finns except for me and Oana, who happened to be Romanian! She told me about Romanian groups and gatherings around Tampere and how I can get informed. I seriously have been meaning to answer her email for about 2 weeks now... actually, longer, and I just haven't managed to yet. I'm a little shy about going to these Romanian gatherings because I'm Romanian but here via Canada and I'm sure most people here have families and are older than I am. But nonetheless, it was awesome to speak Romanian to someone in Finland for the first time ever! [Minus when my parents came to visit.]
"So that conference went until Wednesday and then Wednesday afternoon, still wearing my TFS pants and blazer [Thank you Kelly!] I went to meet my soon-to-be pupil! While I was in Canada, a guy answered my ad about learning English and we got together at Coffee House to discuss his goals and motivation and get to know each other a little. I told him I was going to China and we're meeting again next week. After that meeting, I had a bit more extra time and I don't remember what I did with it... but it flew by. Saturday my friend Nina came back to Tampere [she's been working out of town for the summer as a journalist] and I went to Juha's mom's for lunch. Then that night and the next morning, we packed and got ready, took the bus to the airport straight from Tampere to Helsinki and got on the plane to China! So for some reason, between transoceanic trips, I felt like I had very little breathing room... even though I guess Finland-China is transcontinental... but in this case, I would say just transrussian since that's pretty much the only country we were above haha [okay, and Mongolia for like... 30 minutes.]
"Once we got to Shanghai on Monday, around 7am in the morning, we didn't stop moving until Saturday! We fought off sleep by going for a walk in the morning, meeting Juha's dad [Kari] for lunch, going haggling in the afternoon, going back to the apartment, going to dinner with Kari, and following the World Cup at night [while being treated to an amazing foot massage at Bamboo!]. They put these cups filled with fire on your heel and the fire would take away the oxygen and the cup would suction onto your foot. They then moved it around and that would get rid of the dead skin and stuff. Juha was sleeping near the end because he was so tired and it was really funny. We managed to stay up late that day too. But I basically passed out instantly once we hit the sack around midnight or 11pm... I forget.
"My first impression of Shanghai was really positive! I felt like I had a feel for the city right away. It's MASSIVE but it doesn't feel crowded. It's busy but you don't feel rushed. And best of all, in some weird way, it reminded me of Toronto. There was a ton of inequality which was evident by the skyscrapers EVERYFUCKINGWHERE [why yes, I am Canadian] and then the poor families living in certain neighbourhoods right between all the wealth... but I can't say that shocked me [yes, I am Romanian]. It was exactly what I expected to see. And also, Juha and I ended up at this mall that ONLY had luxury stores. I've never seen anything like that before... Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Channel, Dior... all in one mall! He let me go poke my head in the stores and oogle the 12,000e purses [yes, I realize that reading this from Africa must be slightly jerking but it was part of the experience.] I usually never get to see stores like that because I'm never dressed right. Yet in China it was fine because a) we're white [and thus, most likely tourists] and b) the culture itself is more polite than in North America so no one draws conclusions the moment you walk in the store, or if they did, they didn't show it and were really friendly regardless... it seems random but that was something that stood out on that first day. Also, I learned the important lesson that no public washroom in Shanghai is stocked with toilet paper. With 18M people, who can blame them? Thus, BYOTP!
"Tuesday we went to the Expo. Kari gave us directions for the taxi drivers [who never speak any English] and we spent 8 hours there! There were a lot of tourists from all over China there so Juha got a lot of really shocked looks once those people laid eyes on him. There are approximately 200,000 expats in Shanghai so 'white people' don't get funny looks that often BUT at the Expo, it was obvious that many people didn't come from Shanghai. We checked out the Finnish, Romanian and Canadian pavilions - of course! We also saw the pavillion of the future about technology and sustainability [which was a hot topic among many countries] and special cases that select cities presented of how they were reducing pollution, among many things, and making a difference [Vancouver, Hungzhou, Odense and a special Portuguese house - our favourite]. At the Hungzhou exhibit some Honzhou natives asked to take a picture with us and they were really friendly and spoke pretty good English too! The African countries all had booths in the African Pavilion [minus a few select countries like South Africa]. We went there and visited all the booths of all the countries that we had any ties to. I learned that Obama's dad is Kenyan and that in his hometown [village] Obama is regarded as such an idol for young people to show that they can make a difference. [Hope I remembered/interpreted that right]. Anyway, that made me really happy as I imagined the kids I'd heard about in the slums thinking about Obama. Another thing that really surprised me was that all the people who were presenting their countries in the African pavilion also spoke Mandarin too. It was absolutely amazing to see!
"Wednesday we took it a little easier... I was exhausted from the non-stop sightseeing so while Juha went to the gym in the morning, I went to a massage at this place called Bamboo. Anyway, so I went back there for a mani-pedi because they are so cheap there, but they didn't have anyone there until 2pm for that so I settled for a Chinese massage instead. After I got home, we headed out towards People's Square and ended up at Pizza Hut for lunch haha... I know ... and later Starbucks [in my defense, this was because of the internet!... which they didn't have...] We walked around the area for a while before settling on visiting the Museum of Urban Development. It was actually a really cool museum and they had a small-scale version of the entire city of Shanghai.
"Thursday we took it easy again and went haggling. Then went to the big shopping street: Nanjing Lu and explored The Bund [Western-neighbourhood that looks just like Europe] before heading home.
"Friday we hung out and I can't really remember what we did. We went for dinner with Kari as we did every night and this time his friends Otto and Hilda were there. Otto works for the same company as Kari and him and his wife are from Austria. They also live in Kari's building. They were really nice and we went to this restaurant called The Blue Frog and watched some World Cup from there. Then Juha and I went to a quiet hangout spot to see the rest of the game and enjoy a coffee and a beer. This place was called The Fat Olive and our friend Aline sent us there. We were meeting up with her that night and she had a birthday dinner so to kill some time, she sent us there. After that we took a cab to Bar Rouge, one of Shanghai's hottest clubs. The cover was 100 yuan each [about 12e] and the drinks were more expensive that any place we'd seen up to that point. The club was on the top floor of one of the Bund buildings [Euro-neighbourhood] and the patio looked out on to the river and Pudong [Shanghai's biggest neighbourhood and location of the best known skyscrapers there.] Aline said you can watch the sunrise on Shanghai from there and it's really beautiful... though we didn't get to see this first hand. The money was definitely well-spent, as this place was really, really nice. We spent about 20 minutes chatting with Aline and then she introduced us to her friends. Sadly it was super loud in the club so we didn't get to talk to Aline for long but the music was good!
"I woke up the next day around 11 and Juha's dad was up, playing with the new camera he had bought for Anna, Juha's sister. I chatted with him for maybe 30 minutes before realizing Juha was bed-bound and I went to back to bed for a few hours [I too felt horrible]. He got up a few times to puke... I have never felt so horrible in my life [puking hoorah!]. It was impossible to think of anything else other than the pain and horriblenessness that was our physical condition. We decided this had to be food poisoning [especially since Juha had experienced it before.] We were still weak the next day but we ventured out to Old Shanghai with Kari... and Monday Juha was still recovering while I'd moved on to a cold and whole-body muscle aches. Still, we took a taxi and went back to Old Shanghai. I'd fallen in love with a picture I'd seen briefly on Sunday and I had to go back and get it. We ate at this really nice and authentic place where zero English was spoken, but I really enjoyed the extra-fried food. [Actually. Fried beef and fried rice, yum!] That night we went to a restaurant near-by that looked sketchy but Kari assured us the food was delicious. The menu was also hilarious and consisted of dishes such as: "Fairchild does well and blows up" or "To skin the pig and succeed..." ...neither of which were actual dishes there but I can't remember the exact titles because they just made NO sense. The food ended up being delicious and I gladly would have gone there again, had we had the time.
"Tuesday morning we woke up around 6am and by 6:40am we were on our way to the airport. We took a bus from Helsinki to the train station and took a train to Tampere. We talked the 10 minutes from the train station to our place where we collapsed on the couch and watched TWO football games haha. Or at least, I slept; Juha watched.
"Wednesday morning I had to wake up early, which was fine because of jetlag, and head to my course! Later that day, we went to Juha's mom's [Päivi's] for dinner. Juha's godmother/cousin Anne is in town with her two daughters Anni and Oona. So we're constantly referring to Anni, Anne and Anna this week, haha! I stayed until around 11pm. Then Thursday I had my course again... but this time I took a Tylenol in the morning and almost died all day I was SO tired... I decided to act the way I wanted to feel, which was energetic, and I went out anyway. I met my friend Mia and we decided I was going to teach her French once a week. We started yesterday, from the VERY beginning and had a lot of fun doing it. I then went to Päivi's again around 9pm and stayed until after 11pm.
"Friday was Lauren's birthday and I was invited to her mökki [summer cottage] on an island. Here, I don't need to paint a picture because I can just refer the Canadian readers to Muskoka and Georgian Bay, take your pick, we have similar landscapes in Finland! And by similar, I mean identical. It was beautiful! I brought Romanian crepes, which I realized are almost identical to Finnish crepes. Consequently, no one eyed them questioningly. Lauren's parents and sister arrived a few days prior and are staying in Europe for 7 weeks. How wonderful! And what nice people! I had a great time and I know Lauren did too. <3.!
