A special Christmas update...

It is about 5 in the afternoon on Christmas day here in Shanghai, and I have to say...this was a fabulous Christmas. I don't think I could have asked for anything more knowing how far I am from home. 

The holiday started at Karin's house. I know Karin through my Chinese class. She is here with her parents and they needed some extra children to fill out their fairly large dinner table. It ended up being Karin, her mom and dad, me, Degan (a Canadian guy also studying Chinese), Priscilla (Karin's Brazilian friend) and Frederic (Karin's Swedish friend). Dinner was delicious, including all of the traditional Swedish dishes, i.e. meatballs. Everything was delicious. We all ate until we were stuffed and then began our "white elephant" game. Of course the game was hilarious and Degan, who started out with no presents, made out like a bandit and took everyone else's! It was quite hilarious to see seven "adults" running around a dining room table singing Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs waiting for the buzzer to go off so we could take a seat. It was like I had an extra, extended family that I had never met before! Basically, the evening was fabulous and enhanced by the presence of Glogg wine and a live Christmas tree, not to mention wonderful company. 

Me and the lovely tree.

Me and my Swedish substitute parents!

Today has also been lovely. I surprised my roommate with a miniature Christmas in the middle of our room when she came back from her lesson this morning. She was very excited and after warming up some hot cocoa and cinnamon rolls, we sat down to open a few gifts. I think my favorite part is that we Skyped with my parents while we opened gifts, in a way it was like they were there...which was nice. We just kind of enjoyed ourselves through the morning. It wasn't fancy, it wasn't home, but it was definitely what I needed.

Mini Christmas!

Mun and I in our lovely hats.

It's a family Christmas!

Later we met up with Professor Wu from Willamette! He took me, my roommate, Corinna and his pianist to a delicious Cantonese style lunch. I'm calling it my Christmas dinner though. There was definitely enough food to warrant that. We were at the restaurant for roughly three hours, I'm beginning to think that this is just the average time one should spend at a meal. Who knows. It was delicious and the company was excellent. And now, I plan to spend the rest of my evening tucked snuggly warm in my bed watching movies and drinking hot cocoa.

String Quartet fun!

In the last week I have learned several things about dining with Chinese. Saturday, my quartet (the Phoenix Quartet) had a gig. We performed the first two movements of our Beethoven quartet and the first movement of a Mozart quartet that we had only had for two days. Though a little frightening because of the short rehearsal time, it went extremely well. Later that evening, we met up at a hot pot restaurant for dinner. Three hours, several bottles of Tsingtao and several pounds of food later we are still sitting there. I don't think I have ever felt so full. I finally ate strange food though, some pigs ear...surprisingly crunchy, and pigs' brain...brain. I'm still not sure how I feel about that part of it. 

Since Saturday, I have been crazy busy. I basically practice all the time...at least eight hours every day. I think after one more month of working on my technique will really pay off. Today was hilarious though. I knew that we would have an orchestra rehearsal today at 1:30, I did not however know that we had a concert at 3:30. At least it's over for the semester. 

Later, I met up with my Professor, He Xuan and we walked to a Teppanyaki (I have no idea how to spell that) restaurant. There we waited for twenty minutes for the violist from my quartet and another ten minutes after that for our violinist and cellist. It's "Chinese time" which means that everything starts at least one half hour after it was supposed to. By the time we started grilling the various foods, it was almost 8:00. Everything was delicious, and I surprised myself by eating seafood. A lot of seafood. I probably consumed more seafood tonight than I have in the last several years of my life. I thought things were winding down around 9:00, but two decanters of sakae appeared along with several more plates of prawns and cow tongue (it's chewy). Around 9:45, I was getting kind of antsy, but everyone else seemed content to sit and talk and eat more, so I was patient. Finally the restaurant started shutting down. The waiters kept looking over at our table and finally one came by and forcably made us pay the bill. But Professor He kept chatting away...finally around 10:25 a lull came into the conversation and we finally made a break for it. I think it was the longest meal of my life. Delicious, but long. 

In conclusion...when invited out to dinner by Chinese, one must remember these very important things:

1. Dinner will start at least a half an hour later than scheduled. 

2. Come hungry...very hungry.

3. Finish anything you need to do before you go to dinner, it may take your entire evening. 

4. Come prepared with stories...or at least jokes.

5. EAT FIRST, ASK LATER (if you ask first, you may not be able to eat what they set down in front of you...)

GANG BEI! (cheers)

Here's my string quartet!

 (L to R) Shen Ting (first violin), Yie Zhou (cello), Wei Jin (viola), and me (second violin)...aren't we adorable!

I have a few minutes! Yay.

So I'm heading into the home stretch of my first semester here in Shanghai and things are busier than ever. I have a feeling things are about to get even busier in fact. It is also extremely cold here, freezing, sometimes I can't handle it. Most of the time I'm shivering and when I'm not shivering, I'm thawing. The weirdest part is that the practice rooms are not heated (at least not on the weekends) and even when they are heated, they aren't that warm. 

At least it's better than when my teacher was studying here. In my lesson today he told me that they had to practice in the old building where it was all cement with no windows. Basically they were freezing. Professor He said when they were practicing for exams he would stand on a wooden chair just so that he wouldn't have to stand on the cement floor. They played really fast...apparently. So that made me feel better. 

I am working hard, and I think I might be getting somewhere...hopefully. I have a feeling that the next month or 33 days to be exact will fly by. I have exams on the 19, 25, and 31 of December and then the final solo technical exam on January 5th. Throw a few extra performances in there (orchestra and the string quartet) and some Chinese classes, and there is a lot to do. Most of the time, I feel like I barely have enough time to breathe, much less time to eat or sleep. Although, I always seem to find time on the weekend to make a pilgrimage to the fabric market with Joanna. That place is like some kind of fly trap for me, and I'm the fly. Once you're there, there's no leaving without being measured and handing over some cash for a delightful custom made piece! 

And now I should get on to some Chinese homework or more practicing...or any number of other things...maybe some pomelo...delicious!

FINALLY!

Finally we had enough time and energy to go sightseeing around Shanghai! I have been working extremely hard all week, hard enough to maybe give myself carpal tunnel, which is why a break was much needed. So yesterday we made our plans...get up early and head to Yu Yuan (the famous garden and tea house in Old Town), and then if we had time, to go to the fabric market that was supposedly nearby. This morning, Joanna, Mun (my roomie) and I got up and got ready to go and by 12:30 were walking through Old Town to the garden. As soon as we set foot in the gardens it was like "big city" Shanghai disappeared. We were literally in another world, and it was incredible. I have never seen anything so beautiful that just looking at it makes you feel more at peace and happy and calm. It was amazing and giant. We thought it was just a small garden, but there were more doors and more small paths and different areas. We spent several hours there just walking around enjoying the serenity of the place. 

Lovely ladies in a lovely place!

Amazing, right?

Look! Twins!

I want to live here.

By the time we finished there, we were absolutely starving. We thought we would try the local tradition of xiao long (I think that is the pinyin pronunciation)...a type of dumplings. We waited in line for almost a half an hour. In the end, they were good, but not really worth the thirty minute wait or the 12 RMB we each spent on them.

The horrific line.

The reward for waiting!

Then we made our way through the bazaar, trying to get out and of course getting side tracked by all of the gorgeous things people were selling. We ended up finding a shop that had a few things on sale, they were quite cheap, so we indulged a little and actually shopped! It was very exciting. Later we found the "dollar store" (though here it's more like the 5-10 RMB store) and went crazy. It was delightful. 

Apparently they do celebrate Christmas...sort of....this was one of the stalls...it was weird.

Joanna decided to be traditional Chinese.

By then it was almost 4 o'clock, but we decided that we still wanted to go to the fabric market. After all it was only a short walk away looking at the map. So we walked...and walked...and found some street vendors to buy more delicious Chinese food from...and walked...and finally found the market we were looking for (or one of them anyway). It was absolutely overwhelming. There was fabric everywhere. At the front were all of the silk stalls, then the cottons, then the suiting fabrics, then cashmere and wool and coat materials. And each shop had its own tailor. It was crazy. But the vendors were very calm compared to everywhere else I've been. There was no yelling "Miss! Miss! Have a look!" etc...we just kind of wandered from place to place until we found the right fabric. I had my first piece made! I get to pick it up on Saturday and I am super excited. 

This concluded our sightseeing...or so we thought, until we realized that we could take the double decker sight-seeing tour bus to get back to the dorms! We sat on the top deck in the open air and actually enjoyed seeing some more of Shanghai. We felt like complete tourists...but that's okay...it's what the day was all about!

I can finally breathe for a minute!

I'm sorry that I disappeared for so long. Things have gotten extremely busy and intense over here and I have barely had time to sleep, much less do anything else! So I will recap what has happened since I last updated...

1. We had our orchestra concert last week. It consisted of all contemporary Chinese composers, which was very interesting for the Westerners playing the orchestra as the music itself was foreign. The concert was on Thursday of last week, so we rehearsed almost four hours everyday from Monday to Wednesday. Then we found out (I say this, because we had to ask random people, no one actually told us) that we were supposed to meet at the front gate at 8:45 Thursday morning to get on buses, go to the venue and have a dress rehearsal. Now we think to ourselves, "Okay....so we'll get there around 9:15...rehearse from 9:30....we can't be there past 3:00, so we must come back and change, etc. and then they'll take us back for the concert in the evening." This was definitely not the case. We showed up at the bus and half of the Chinese kids were already dressed in concert black. Needless to say, we altered our plans immediately. We literally stayed at the venue from 9am to roughly 10pm or a little later. But the concert went well and in the end, it was an experience all its own.

2. My lessons with He Xuan have been improving. We are now working only on technique, or so I thought. But then this week, he asked to hear the Mozart Concerto I was working on. Unfortunately I had not practiced it for about two weeks as I was dead intent on being able to to all of the technical excercises/scales/double stops that he asked for. He's a little bit concerned for me over the technical exam in January where every violinist in the conservatory performs the same scale in single notes, thirds, sixths, octaves, fingered octaves and tenths, then the same Paganini Caprice along with another caprice of ones choice. Basically I want to prove to everyone that technique is the easy part. Ha. This could be more difficult than I thought. 

3. Chinese is going well. It was weird, actually having to study something again, after the summer and then two months of just practicing. We had midterms this week, so studying was definitely required as yes, I would like some credit for going to three hours of Chinese every day. But there was really no need to worry, I know more Chinese than I thought I did, as I passed the test with flying colors. I did it so quickly too that I had time to practice for an extra two hours before my next commitment! 

4. Speaking of practicing: that's about all I do. This is the reason that I have no pictures of the last two weeks here. All I've done is go to rehearsal and practice. Needless to say, my violin hickey is huge and seems to be permanent now (this I'm actually not so happy about). However, I think if I can keep this up, by January I will be ready for the technical exam and just about anything else. There just can't be any slacking off. 

5. It's gotten quite cold and gloomy here. This makes practicing and getting things done a little more difficult. All I really want to do is snuggle up in my bed with a good movie/book and hibernate. This desire is amplified by the fact that there is hot cocoa sitting on my shelf now and it calls to me often! Alas, I have a lot of work to do and a house-warming party to attend later today. Hibernating will have to wait. 

I will do my best to update more often, but who knows. When things get busy here, things get really busy. 

Bach Performance!

You know you're at Conservatory when...

at the end of the day, you count on your fingers all of the hours you have played since that morning and nearly run out of fingers. I played for ten hours yesterday, can I just say that that is absolutely insane. The craziest part is that I don't feel sore, my hands are fine, my shoulders are fine, my back is fine...so I guess I'll just try it again today. In the meantime...I want to share a few things I've learned about China:

1. No one wears white here because if you wash a white article of clothing in any water, it comes out a lovely slightly off white/yellowish color. 

2. The Chinese have incredibly high metabolism. They are all stick skinny but eat only fried food and food drenched in either sugar or oil.

3. Conservatory students think about one thing and one thing only...practicing. (I have definitely adopted this habit)

4. Elevators are like clown cars, you never know how many people you will squish into one elevator. (I have taken to just taking the stairs down from the 14th floor at the busy time in the afternoon...otherwise you wait almost ten minutes for the elevator)

5. The Chinese will wait for the laziest mode of transportation, i.e. the elevator or in the metro station there will be a giant crowd in front of the escalator while there are only two people on the stairs.

6. "For all the tea in China" is kind of a lie. Since I've been here, I've only had three cups of tea. I think I've drank more coffee in the last two months than at any other time in my life.

7. Don't cross the street on a red, you will get hit. For that matter, don't cross it on a green either there will be an angry taxi driver or a bus turning and they will not stop.

8. When buying illegal DVDs always ask if they are in English. We bought Wanted and it was actually dubbed in Russian...go figure.

9. I love jiaozi (dumplings in English).

10. No matter how much cool/interesting stuff there is in China, home will always be better, I think. But for now, this is definitely where I'm supposed to be!

The tallest building in Shanghai...and other things.

Well I'm still working on trying to get the video of my performance off of my camera and onto my computer, but so far I haven't had much luck. In general, I felt that my performance could have been better, but the moment I walked on stage I got into a crazy panic mode and could barely function. I think my performance ended up being about 95% muscle memory and 5% me. It was like I was in the backseat of the car with an invisible person in the driver's seat that I could only command once in a while. But I made it through my first performance without error (it just wasn't very musical) and He Xuan (my teacher) said that I did a good job. Now we are going to start working on technique as there is a technical examination in two months! AH!

On Thursday, they cancelled class and took us on a field trip to see some of the major sites around Shanghai. We got to see the tallest building, 100 stories, the Shanghai World Financial Center, then we took a little walk along the Huangpu River (the river that divides the East and West districts of Shanghai) and then I went to orchestra rehearsal while everyone else went to the Shanghai Museum...I was very jealous. But here are some really cool pictures of Shanghai!

SWFC with the Jin Mao building in the reflection.

Then we were in the future.

On the 97th floor with Joanna and Rachel.

View from the top.

The Chinese tourists also took pictures of this...they thought it was hilarious.

Me and the Oriental Pearl Tower.

I'm sorry I disappeared for a while...

It's like things have finally all fallen into place and school has actually started. In the last two weeks, I have been to roughly twenty hours of rehearsal, twenty some odd hours of class, and practiced in the range of 50 to 60 hours. Needless to say, I haven't had a lot of time to sit here and do updates, much less sleep. 

My schedule is a madhouse for the rest of the semester, I have three hours of Chinese every morning followed by an insane rehearsal schedule that changes from day to day. Monday and Thursday houses the insanity that is orchestra (it's bizarre, I thought it would be better than SCO or UCO, but it has to be one of the most disorganized orchestras I've ever been involved in. They don't let you take the music home to practice, so it's basically sight reading and we haven't even made it through all of the repertoire...we're performing in just over two weeks). Tuesday I have my violin lesson followed by a rehearsal with my piano trio. Wednesday I go from lunch to a string quartet rehearsal and then directly to my piano trio coaching. And Friday is another coaching for the string quartet. Amongst all of these things, I must find time to practice on my own. My teacher has very high expectations. Which is good, but also very stressful...I don't think I have ever been this stressed to go to a lesson before. 

Over the weekend, I went to the International Instrument Show at the Expo Center in Pudong. This basically took up two days of my life and was tiring more than anything else. They definitely had some cool stuff though!

This was a very pretty piano being played by a very pretty pianist in a matching dress.

Corinna decided to play the tiny piano! The guys in the stall thought it was hilarious and got out all sorts of phones and cameras to take pictures. When she got up, they practically forced me to sit down so they could take more pictures of the silly foreigners playing the children's piano.

Crazy colored violins!

Exciting Chinese instruments...these were supposedly made out of jade...but who really knows?

And an awesome tye-dyed piano to round up the show!

And now, although I hate to cut this so short, I really do need to go practice. I am giving my first performance as a conservatory student tomorrow evening. I am playing the Adagio and Fuga of the Bach Sonata No. 1 in G minor...it will be my first performance of the Fuga ever. I guess I have to start somewhere though, and why not start with the most difficult and work backwards?

China has a lot of people...

It's not like I didn't know that China was a populous country, but let me tell you that experiencing it's enormity in full swing is another story entirely. Today, Joanna and I decided that because the weather was nice, it would be a good day to check out Old Town and Yuyuan Garden (which was supposedly free but was actually 40 RMB to get into). So around 3:00 we get on the Metro, transfer to Line 2 at People's Square and it was there that we knew this was going to be one crazy adventure. We were practically lifted off of our feet onto the escalator and more or less shoved into the car of the subway. We only had to be super squished for one stop, so that was okay. 

It didn't take us too long to figure out where we were going, though we looked like total tourists. It's weird, I no longer feel like a tourist around the school, because the people in the shops and restaurants recognize us now, and they at least understand what we're trying to say. But once we get outside of our district, it's like another world. We basically ended up following the crowd and randomly found our way to exactly where we wanted to go. It was absolutely insane. Because this is a holiday week, there are a lot of tourists in Shanghai. The foreigners tend to leave Shanghai and all of the Chinese come in. There was barely any room to breathe and what air there was, you didn't really want to breathe in. Once we finally made it to the garden and the Bridge of Nine Turnings, and realized that to get into the garden you had to pay and saw that people were practically at a standstill on the bridge, we decided to turn right back around.

By this time, we were starving, but decided that we should just head towards home and grab something there. We finally make it to the entrance to Line 2 and find that it is in fact closed for the night. Great! We are now in Nanjing Road, one of the busiest possible streets to be on. It is packed from one side to the other, barely enough room to push through with elbows out on both sides. We end up walking for maybe twenty minutes before deciding that we either need food or to sit somewhere. Lo and behold, a McDonald's appears, like a sign from God, and we descend into a sort of Westernized heaven. It smelled delicious, we both got chicken nuggets and for roughly five minutes, pretended that we were at home and not trying to get to People's Square during one of the busiest times of the day during a holiday. After this fortification, we found a shortcut and in no time made it to People's Square Metro Station and shortly thereafter found ourselves at home. 

As beautiful as it was, I don't think I will be traveling back there any time soon.

We made it to Old Town!

Entrance to the bazaar.

Fun colorful hanging things.

Ton-o-People.

It's me!

Me and Joanna

Pretty fish in the lake.

Really cool buildings.

This is where we got lost.

Nanjing Road at night.

Finding the real Shanghai...

So in the last few days, I have felt less and less like I am in a Western city and more and more like I am actually in China. I think this is due to the fact that we keep exploring in the more local areas...the streets off of the main road. 

Friday night, my roommate, the Taiwanese girl and the Japanese girl who lives on our floor decided to cook a huge meal for all of us. They told us it would just be like rice and veggies and maybe some chicken, but it soon became clear that there was much more than that. We had rice, kale, something like potato salad with sausage, scrambled eggs with onion and green pepper, chicken with onions and each a cup of miso soup with tofu and some kind of Chinese vegetable in it. By the time we were done, Joanna and I thought we might actually explode. They actually let us help wash the dishes, and just as we were about to go back to our own business the Japanese girl brings this beautiful tea set into the room and starts serving coffee! And all they wanted in exchange for all of the work was for us to cook spaghetti for them sometime this week....that should be both entertaining and hilarious. There will be pictures. 

It is funny, though, how culture has so much to do with food. I feel involved in the Chinese culture when I'm ordering a special food that you can only get here or walking down a market side street like last night. I wish I had had my camera with me last night. We turned off of Fuxing Road and ended up in this tiny street with vendors on both sides. One guy was yelling at us to come look at his stuff, so we did. He had an assortment of live water creatures, i.e. fish, crabs, shrimp (yes live shrimp) and some other things I did not recognize. Other stalls were selling fruits or vegetables and I'm pretty sure most of the people were speaking Shanghainese (the crazy Shanghai dialect that Mandarin/English speakers cannot understand). 

Later, as we were wandering, we ran into the guy who runs this amazing barbeque stand at night. He has an assortment of meats and vegetables on skewers and you just pick out what you want, hand them to him and he grills them for you! It is super cheap, delicious and an all around good thing. The first time we tried this, he was very low on meat products, in fact I got the last of whatever it was...when we went back last night, Joanna informed me that she had ordered me chicken hearts last time. Thanks Joanna. Actually they weren't that bad, but it was kind of weird to think that I literally ate a stick of chicken hearts. Anyway...he actually had chicken breast this time with a delicious spicy glaze and cauliflower and asparagus and mushrooms (Joanna ate the mushrooms....I still don't like them).

Pick your poison.

Heat up the grill.

Grill delicious snacks.

Wait for delicious snacks.

ENJOY!

Seriously...these are like the best things ever invented. I love it. And it's super cheap. We got eight sticks for roughly $1.50 which is crazy! The only other bit of news to pass on is that we finally saw the first cockroach in the building last night. It's not like we expected that there wouldn't be any cockroaches, we just hoped against hope that we didn't have them. But there was definitely one scuttling around the common area last night. Ew. Guess I will have to thank Mun more profusely for picking up after me (she has to be one of the sweetest people I have ever met!).

Anyway...I'm sure I will have a lot more to say over the week as we will actually have time to do some exploring of Shanghai (not the area around school)! Yay!

...and things are looking up

Let me start out with a disclaimer: this is probably my worst day here so far, and quite honestly it wasn't that bad...so go me!

For the last two weeks, they have been doing construction on Fenyang Rd, the street that the school and dorm are on. They started with the actual street, then the curb and then two days ago, they completely tore out the sidewalk. Why? No one really knows. So we've had to walk either in the dirt sidewalk or on the street which seems rather dangerous when lugging a violin and a large bag of music around. But my very favorite part of this is that they told us that on Wednesday, that would be yesterday, they would turn the water off from 8pm to 5am to work on the pipes. However, come Sunday evening at 8pm the water goes off, coming back on promptly at 5am Monday morning. Then yesterday (Wednesday) they turned the water off at noon without telling anyone and it magically reappeared around 8pm the same day. How bizarre is that?

Last week, as you may or may not know, my power adapter for my Macbook broke, so I had to figure out where to take it. Turns out there is an Apple repair center on the 21st floor of this electronics warehouse. So I took it there last Thursday and they told me they would call when the new one came in. So I waited...and waited...and then finally yesterday I called them and they said it would be ready today. So I called back today just to make sure, and the guy on the line was convinced that he couldn't figure out what I was talking about. So I called back later and got someone else who told me that according to the computer, it was ready and that I should just go down and ask for it. An hour later, I have my power adapter!

My violin lesson was today and I was super excited, because I felt like I had really done what Mr. He asked me to do. However to my surprise, he told me that I was doing it in the completely opposite way and was actually kind of angry or maybe disappointed, either way. Also, he somehow assumed that I would be able to get the music for Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 and learn the first movement...this whole request was lost in translation and I ended up at my lesson without even the sheet music. Oops. However, I have three days to work my butt off and make up for it at a lesson on Sunday, so wish me luck (both for my playing and for the two of us actually understanding what the other one is saying!).

In other news, I have officially learned enough Chinese to ask for a metro card with 50 RMB on it, buy a hard boiled egg in the morning, order veggie or pork or sweet baozi, order noodle soup or rice with chicken or pork or dumplings or wonton soup, answer the phone in Chinese and say I only speak English, and tell a taxi driver where I need to go and when to stop! And today we learned some very important and useful phrases for shopping and bartering...so look out Shanghai!

Anyway, after a ridiculous morning/afternoon, the evening has been relaxing and fairly nice. And now I am going to rearrange the furniture in my room.

Just a quickie...

1. I ordered my first meal in Chinese all by myself! Dumplings...delicious. 

2. I have a residence permit! 

3. We went to IKEA yesterday and now at least my room feels something less like a prison. It has been made more cozy by the addition of some mats and pillows. 

4. Joanna and I made a salad for dinner last night with veggies from the market and it was also delicious as everything else here is either fried or steamed or drenched in oil.

5. The listening teacher, ting li laoshi, thinks that I look like Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth. This was explained through large hand gestures and broken English and was, in fact, hilarious.

6. I have a lot of work to do. 

7. I am performing in a few weeks and must memorize the Fuga from the G minor Sonata by Bach pretty much by Thursday (which is tomorrow), this could present problems.

8. I still don't know when orchestra begins.

9. It's 6:57 am here and I need to go practice before class. 

10. I miss all of you like mad! It's great over here, but there's something to be said about having family and close friends nearby. 

Sorry it's been a few days....

Things have gotten extremely busy over here! I have barely had time to breathe much less have time to write anything down (not to mention that my computer's adapter cable got fried, so I haven't been able to use a computer since Wednesday). Since our three day weekend, classes have really started to pick up and by classes, I mostly mean Chinese. I'm just going to say that Chinese has to be one of the most complex languages invented...it's really amazing, but incredibly difficult to try to learn. I think it's easier because I'm living here now, so I hear it all the time, but still. Fluency is far away, let me just put it that way.

I am practicing a ton and the music just keeps piling up. At this point, I am in three ensembles: orchestra, a piano trio and a string quartet, plus private lessons and 15 hours of Chinese every week. And I have to fit a practice regiment in around all of that, which is kind of interesting. However, it seems that whatever I'm doing is good. At my lesson on Thursday, He Xuan, my teacher, told me that I am going to perform the Bach G minor Sonata on October 15, at one of the student recitals. Mind you, he did not ask if I wanted to perform, he just kind of said that I was going to. All in all, I think this is a good thing.

What else...what else...so much has happened, so I forget things really easily. We went to a symphony concert the other night. It was at the Oriental Art Center: 

And before that we went to the Cantonese Opera. And we have eaten a lot of delicious food and have generally just been working very hard. From now on, the internet and my computer should be pretty stable, so I will update with more stories, etc. because I will actually remember them. Oh dear.

And here's a few more pictures just to make this update slightly less boring for you all:

Peking Opera House of Shanghai, Yifu Theater

The story I did not understand.

Badass dragon lady!

Seriously mini-fridge.

Joanna and a funny sign.

And here is the tiny kitten in the bag shop that they wanted to give us...it was adorable, but we live in dorms. Oh well.

Alright...goodnight on my end!