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.