First day of classes in Shanghai!

你好们！

Today was our first day of classes here in Shanghai! It was a very long but impactful day for the CIEE students here in China. We began the day by heading to our first class. I've been placed into level two. The level two students spent the morning reviewing how to introduce ourselves and small talk in Mandarin. After a long review, we moved onto the mall near campus, where we were given the assignment to interview a local Chinese speaker about their life. I have to admit that it was quite a daunting task, but, really, it’s quite exciting when you can have a legit conversation with someone in a different language.

After the interview, we were allowed to wonder about the mall and go to lunch. Two things happened during this time. Number one: I managed to order boba tea completely in Mandarin and I’ll probably be proud of myself for doing that for quite a while. Number two: I don’t eat meat, so I had to wonder around the food court asking: 你有豆腐吗？你有豆腐吗？(Do you have tofu?). When I finally found a restaurant that had tofu, I, to my great surprise, discovered that they only accepted payment over WeChat -a Chinese app that essentially does everything you can imagine- and the really nice man next to me offered to pay, if I gave him the cash I had. I left the restaurant repeatedly saying 谢谢。谢谢。谢谢。。。 （thank you) to him.

After lunch our group went onto the Urban Planning Museum. After our tour, a few girls held a split contest to see who could go down the farthest. Samaia just so happened to do a really good split in front of a another tour group, who all preceded to gasp very dramatically, and then ask to take multiple photos with her. Out of three days that I’ve been here, this moment has been marked as the most iconic of trip so far.

After leaving the CIEE group for the day, Samaia and I’s host mother took us out to dinner and then for a bit of shopping. It was a great day in Shanghai.

- Abigayle :)