Flood at SSIS!

It has been too long since I posted. I have a couple unfinished drafts of posts that I just couldn't find the words or motivation to finish. One is about the results of the Marathon that I ran over 3 months ago.

Since then I have had a summer vacation relaxing in Canada as well as a switch of apartments. Today was the first day of school of my second school year in Shanghai at Shanghai Singapore International School (SSIS) and here is the eventful story:

Big Bus Tours

Big Bus Tours are tours that a variety of cities offer that allow you to get on and off the bus whenever you like. They stop and pick people up at the different attractions throughout the city. The buses are double-decker, with the option of sitting outside on the top deck.

I have done a tour with this company twice, and overall they were good. Especially because the trips I took were small trips. They gave me the chance to choose what to do as I went.

Marathon Training

 It has been a busy couple weeks since I returned from Canada. This is why I haven't updated the blog in nearly a month. As soon as I got back to school I had a lot of deadlines to meet for report cards among other things a 2 week vacation gets you behind in.

Plus, as mentioned in this whole post I have been dedicating my spare time to running!

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As I mentioned in my post about the AQI, I decided to run a marathon on The Great Wall in Beijing. The race will be May 16th, and since I made the decision I have continued to take steps to make this happen.

The first step was find someone to run the marathon with.

Chinese New Year

The school is currently on a 2 week break to celebrate Spring festival, or better known as Chinese New Year. This is the festival celebrating the calendar year changing. It is also called Lunar New Year.

When I was in Korea they called it Solar New Year, among other things. It is usually the same day, except once every 24 years based on the moon.

In China, this year is the year of the goat. Some traditional things that happen during CNY are lighting firecrackers and giving money in red envelopes. There are always fire crackers firing in Shanghai, but there were certainly more firing leading up to the big celebration. The teachers also pooled some money for the bus driver as well as the cleaners and this money was placed into a red envelope.

I flew home on Saturday, which is part of the reason this post is short and late.

My Saturday went like this:

7:30 Woke up.
8:30 Ran 13 KM.
10:00 Finish packing up.
11:30 Walk to the metro to catch line 9. Take line 9 to line 2 and transfer. Take line 2 to the fast train. Get on the fast train to the airport.
13:00 Arrive at the airport, 3 hours before my flight.
13:30 Find an empty check in desk only to find out my flight have been delayed 4 hours.
14:00  Eat at Starbucks.
15:00 Finally check in.
15:50 Check time, see my plane should have been leaving. Continue to kill time, including eating again, this time at Burger King.
19:30 Finally board the plane
21:00 Arrive in Toronto (having also traveled to a time difference of 13 hours)

I'm still attempting to get over jet lag.

Last Thursday the children did a Chinese New Year festival.Here is a small snapshot of it:

Biking Through Shanghai

One of my favourite things about living in this city is biking. As I mentioned in a prior post about the Shanghai roads, there are special bike lanes set up for the different smaller modes of transportation. These are not limited to bicycles. In fact bicycles are probably the minority. There are motorcycles, mopeds and various other electric hybrids.

I wouldn’t want to use these lanes with anything other than a bicycle. Not because they wouldn’t be fun, I’d just prefer to get the exercise that you can only get from a bicycle. Shanghai is really flat, so just a standard bike is needed. No need for a mountain bike.

The Summer Palace

After the Forbidden City I headed back to my hostel, grabbed something to eat and then hopped on the subway again to get to the Summer Palace.

 The Summer Palace is in the North West part of the city, outside the outer ring metro line. It was about a 50 minute metro ride.

Forbidden City

In my last post, I went into way more detail than I expected about the history of Tian'anmen Square. It was on the list of top things to do while in Beijing.

The rest of the list included the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and hutongs. I didn't pay for any tours, just rode the metro to them, paid the entrance fee (at the places that had them) and wandered around aimlessly. If I was really interested in the tours it was quite easy to eavesdrop on the tour guides and follow them around. This was especially true for the larger tour groups.

Tian'anmen Square

Beijing is the capital city of China and thus makes it one of the most important. It also has a long deep history dating back thousands of years. This history encompasses 7 World Heritage sites, including the Great Wall. Further, it is the birthplace of The People's Republic of China.

I went to several of the top sites in Beijing. I opted not to get the tour guide for these sites. I figured that I could use the internet to learn what I wanted to learn and these were places I wanted to just explore on my own. It was also an adventure navigating the metro and arriving on my own.

I googled what to do and see in Beijing and I found a list that listed different things to see during a short trip. I used those to decide what I should do. This post initially was going to be about all the places I saw in Beijing, but the first part I wrote ended up taking me a long time and can stand on it's own as a post.

Tian'anmen Square

AQI

I was really lucky that it was so clear when I climbed the Great Wall. I left Beijing on the 27th of December on the train and I could not see a lot when I looked out the windows. This was because the air quality index (AQI) was high. In other words, there was a lot of pollution in the air.

This is an ongoing problem throughout all of China, not just Beijing. The problem also includes Shanghai.

The Great Wall of China

A trip to The Great Wall was a certainty at some point during my stay in China. I couldn't imagine staying here for 2 years and not making a visit to it. As it was, I felt like my 5 month stay was far too long without venturing to this historic icon.

I was prepared to go during Christmas break since the start of the school year really. When I divulged these plans to people they advised me to dress warm because at that time of year Beijing is so cold. The winds out in the open would make it that much worse. I didn't want weather to deter me, so I purchased a large thermal jacket from the pearl market in Shanghai. I spent just over $100 on the coat and was hoping I didn't get ripped off by too much as I was not sure what I should be paying and I had to barter to get the price that I did get (a future post will go into detail about this). I looked at the same jacket online and it cost over $800 so regardless of if I could have acquired it cheaper here, I did save plenty of money.

Revisiting My Top 8 Travel List

A few years ago I was in a rut, being under employed and sitting at my parents house a lot, trying to write a travel blog while not traveling. Not an easy task. While at home, I created a list of 8 things I wanted to do while traveling.

I mentioned that at the time, friends from home felt like I had traveled everywhere to which I disagreed. I still disagree, but I do acknowledge that I have done a lot. I have even tackled some of the things on my top 8 list, with plans to bring down a couple more. I still maintain that the more I travel the more I realize I have been no where.

Below is the list, updated with my current idea on when it will be completed, or comments on if it has been completed. The link to blog posts relating to my experience has also been provided in case you missed them, or would like to relive them.

Shanghai Roads

In my area of the city, Qibao, I live on Zhongchun road. This road is set up like many other busy roads throughout the city. It runs pretty much North/South and in the middle of the road there is a median that seperates the traffic going in different directions. This prevents cars from making a left hand turn into driveways and some side streets. Instead, they need to make a U turn at the next traffic light, and then the turn they wish to make will be a right hand one.

Crowds

One thing of note about Shanghai are the crowds. This isn't a surprise when you consider there are over 24 million people living in Shanghai. That makes it the largest city in the world population wise, although there is more room for the crowds of people compared to some of the other more populated cities.

That doesn't change the fact that it is crowded. Especially when all these millions of people are doing something popular, like traveling on the metro, going grocery shopping or site seeing at the Bund.

Xiao Long Bao

It's not like me to write about food. I am certainly not very adventurous when it comes to food.

Case in point, I spent 365 days living in Korea and I estimate that I went to McDonald's around 250 times. Perhaps slightly less because sometimes I went to Burger King or had pizza. The main thing is I ate at North American fast food joints a lot. I'm a little ashamed to admit that, but if you know me it probably isn't hard to believe that was the case.

I didn't even try the famous bibimbop. I also barely tried kimbap because I didn't really like it. These were both very common meals or snacks that people ate there. I just stuck to french fries and chicken nuggets.

Starting out in Shanghai with my girlfriend Michelle however made food and trying new foods a little more of a priority. The most famous food in Shanghai is xiao long bao (show long bow is how I pronounce it, but they don't always understand me. When that happens I have to show them a picture from my phone of the chinese words 小籠饅頭). It is sometimes known as the Shanghai soup dumpling.

Lots of places sell these dumplings, but we wanted to have our first taste of them to be the very best. Researching online we found that the best could be found in the Yu Yuan garden area. Apparently that is where all the tourists go to get the dumplings, including Chinese tourists. It is also the first, or a branch of the first xiao long bao restaurant.

People's Square and The Bund

People's square is located at the center of Shanghai. It is on the Puxi side of the Huangpu river and is on top of one of, if not the, busiest metro stops in China. 400,000 people use this metro stop every day. Using the metro in general, but especially this station, gives you an idea of how populous this city is.

The square itself was converted into a square from a horse racing track. When China became a communist country, gambling became illegal and the need for a horse racing track no longer existed. It too is often quite busy. It is a popular tourist spot, and from what I have read it is a common place to get picked up for a tea scam.

Shanghai Metro

My new apartment isn't very close to the city centre. In fact, it is 17 KMs away from People's Square.


This isn't a huge deal because Shanghai's transit system is awesome. I am thinking specifically of the metro system as I have never used a public bus.

Finding an Apartment

When someone new moves to Shanghai, so the debate begins on where to live. Should they live in the Pudong area of the city or should they live in the Puxi area?

Puxi is the more happening area, where the downtown is, and where a lot of the restaurants and night clubs are. Pudong is known more for having actual houses, with plenty of parks and more of a family friendly area.

This was also my first lesson in Chinese. Dong means east and xi (she) means west. Pu is the name of the big river that dissects the city. So Puxi is west of the river while Pudong is east of it.

Hello From China!

I have been absolutely awful at keeping this blog up to date.

I have done a lot of traveling since I last updated this blog on my adventures...and I am not planning on slowing down the travel anytime soon. Since my last travel post, I have been to Dubai, Vietnam, Bali, Shanghai and Hong Kong. I even spent a year dormant in Canada.

That means I have a lot of work to do in order to update this blog.

As a second grade teacher I am constantly encouraging my students to keep practicing in order to achieve better results and improve. As an aspiring writer, it is time to take my own advice.

I'm trying to decide what exactly this means. I think I should be writing daily in order to keep my writing skills sharp. I can keep myself accountable for that by promising and following through with a weekly article for this blog.

Next Adventure!

I have been terrible at keeping up with this blog, and I intend to change that!

The last post I made was about my time in Oman. That was back in October of 2012! A year and a half ago. Since then I have travelled to Dubai, Vietnam and Bali.

While I have not done anything worth writing about in the last year of my life (at least that fits the theme of this blog) I still have not caught up on everything I have done. Vietnam in particular was a long 2 week trip that was packed full of adventure, including a food tasting tour that would shock those of you who know me and are familiar with my food tastes (or lack there of).

Will I ever catch up on these travels? If there was ever a time to catch up on them it would have been in the 8 months while I was being a couch potato and becoming addicted to netflix.

Now, I am presented with a new adventure. One that takes me to one of the most populated cities in the world; Shanghai.

Here I will teach a grade 2 class while exploring what China has to offer. The adventure starts on August 5th and I can't wait! I'll be pretty busy between now and then with friend's weddings, bachelor parties and birthdays. Once I arrive in Shanghai, there may be too many new and exciting things to write about to ever catch up on what I could have been writing the last 8 months.

I'll try my best. Back to East Asia I shall go!

Nizwa

The man who took us to and from the snorkeling was very nice. His name was Mohammad and he was Omani. He asked what else we were planning to do, and if we had paid for any of it yet. We had not. We wanted to see the mountains, visit Nizwa and visit a Wadi. We had arranged day trips for some of it through the hotel, but had not yet paid for it.

Mohammad offered to do all of the things we wanted to do for quite a bit cheaper. He also acted as our cab driver, driving us from the hotel to the beach and suggesting restaurants along the way and he did not charge us anything for this service.

The first trip we did was to a fort at the base of the Hajar Mountains. The Nizwa fort used to be an important link between Muscat and the rest of the country.

The fort itself looks like what people who have never been to the Middle East would expect it to look like, myself included.


 Mohammad took us up through the mountains along the way. Quite nice for those in the Middle East and those stuck in the boring desert that is Kuwait. But nothing you can't see in the rest of the world.






This is the top of the fort.

This is the view at the rest of the fort from above.