So just a little update on my life here in Shanghai...

The first company that I worked for did not work out very well. We had some major communication issues. They thought I spoke Chinese very well and then I thought they would have spoken better English. There just wasn't anything for me to do at their office from the hours of 8:30-5pm. So now I am currently working for an events and promotion company. They have me help out with events and also with updating English websites so that their events are promoted. :)The job is good and the people I work with are really great. The hours are just really awkward. I work late at night, but I guess that comes with working in Shanghai nightlife. It's definitely something that is outside of ordinary for me, but it's been fun.

Since my hours are weird, I have a lot of free time during the day. It's been cool because I get to relax and take care of things that I need to get done like laundry and cleaning up my place. I have also done a little sight seeing on my own.

I went to the Aquarium here in Shanghai. It's in Pudong right by the Oriental Pearl Tower. It was a pretty nice aquarium. The had a special exhibit on the Yangtze River critters. The aquarium also had exhibits of different regions around the world. Each area was decorated in ways that resembled the region. For South America, the entire area was like a jungle and also looked like it had ancient ruins from the Aztecs. For Africa, the area was painted like the Sahara and they had these two giraffe statues. It was really nice and enjoyable. At the end of the aquarium there was a really long under water tunnel that you could walk through. It was the longest one I have seen. It's not just sharks and rays. There are different sections so I saw tons of cool fish, sharks, rays, and turtles.

On another day, I did a little exploring around the French Concession. There is a Propaganda Poster Museum. It's kind of sketchy. You have to go to this apartment complex and at the entrance the guard will give you a business card to direct you to the building that the museum is located. It's in the basement of one of the buildings. They have tons of posters and old books from the People's Republic of China's earlier days when Chairman Mao was in power. It was really neat to see all the propaganda posters. There were some directed against the US and others that promoted education and industry or, of course, the Communist Party.

In the French Concession, there is another area called Xintiandi which means something like New Heaven. It was an older area of the French Concession. Its an area filled with alley ways that used to house Shikumen homes or alley way homes. The place has completely been renovated and now houses restaurants and stores. There is one museum that is a Shikumen Open House. It is a replica of what a home might have looked like when they were built back in th3 1920's or 30's. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures so sadly, I don't have any expamples of the home. They are tall homes with two to three floors. The first floor houses the courtyard, kitchen, and living areas like the study/library. There is also a little room between the floors called the tingzijian. This room was often the hottest one in the house in the summer and the coldest one in the winter, so families often rented them out for a little extra income. Writers that came to Shanghai would often rent these rooms because they were affordable housing in the city and because of this the Tingzijian Literary Movement was born.

Shanghai has a lot of interesting places that are so different from each other. I have about five weeks left here, so I'll be doing a lot more exploring before I leave. There is still so much that I want to see and do.