Spring Festival and beyond!

Don't worry im still alive! I'm been trying to think of a good theme for this next blog and well that failed so this is going to be a random jumble of everything!
So for those of you who a) can't think of the perfect place to take you significant other on Valentines day of b) planning on spending February 14th with Love Actually, a box of pizza, and Ben and Jerry (Sandbar you know this what we would be doing, boys or no boys!) worry no more, you can celebrate the Chinese New Year. be cultural (what up Global Fusion) and stop worrying about this hallmark holiday! This year is the year of the tiger so get fierce. Fun New Years facts: This holiday is a very family oriented holiday, people go back to their hometown, for many people this is their one trip back per year, my laoshi (professor) is going home to see her family for the first time in half a year! The area around our apartments is starting to clear out, shops are closing for the New Year 新年. Since a lot of people migrate to Shanghai for work, there are not as many people that are actually from the city (chengshi-城市). So this holiday is about good fortune and luck so people will put a post of 副 (fu) upside down on their doors to welcome in good fortune and good luck. Also, the adults will give 红包(hong bao) which are little red envelopes filled with money, hello good fortune! The Chinese love their fireworks so people have been setting them off leading up to the New Year. Now these shows aren't set to music and planned like we think of fireworks shows its more college students who have a few extra kuai who are bored in our courtyard.... how i love china!
Starting tomorrow after our chineses exam we start a 2 week break (jealous?).On Wednesday we're going to leave for Yunnan, a southern province of China where many of the minority groups live. I'll make sure to fill you in on my adventures down south! All i know so far is that its gonna be warm and beautiful!
Alright so next topic....shopping! You can't walk far without finding something you can buy here, whether its cute little notebooks with funny english misspellings such as "I beliebve i can touch the sky", clothes, or food! Last week we went to purse party heaven! As we were coming in we saw western looking women stuffing purses in the giant roller suitcases! When we went upstairs there were rows of shops filled with the top designer bags, a girls dream! Now i know i told you all about the sketchy backroom before, well everyone of these stores had backrooms, there were all sorts of hidden doors and rooms, like a fun house! One of the stores was called "Jinhao Golf", you know a little bit of Chinese with an American flare, oh ya and it sold sunglasses, ipods and video games. When we were walking to this shopping center it was just me and one of my other American looking friends, since well we kinda stood out, surprise surprise, aka targets for scams. Case #1- The tea scam. We were warned about this at orientation and thanks to our street smarts we didn't fall for it! Basically what they do is try and befriend you and ask to go out to tea with you, in our case they invited us to a "special tea ceremony" and then charge you a ridiculous amount of the tea and suddenly loose they're English skills.
next....
so all of you who have been abroad or experienced a major change, know the "roller coaster" feeling that happens. i think there are so many emotions that go into a something like this, that none of them come out subtle. While i did go away for school the change from Colorado to Ohio is worlds different then what I'm experiencing right now. If you're just reading this to get a little lesson on Shanghai you can take a break from this paragraph! I can't even begin to put into words all of this. i'll wake up one day (after snoozing the 2 alarms i set for myself obviously) and may wake up so happy to be in China and loving everything about it, ill walk to class past the respiratory disease hospital (safe right!) and be overlooking the smog, and spit in the streets and focusing on the great milk tea and dumplings, the new perspective I'm gaining about a society that i have never experienced, and culture that this city has to offer. Come lunch time it may be a totally different story. Now please don't get me wrong, i would never trade this experience for anything in the world. I couldn't be more lucky to have an amazing family to support me and inspire me (love you mom, dad, pari, megan, molly, anne marte) but it does have it's ups and downs but i know that is what it's supposed to be about. From high school when the main theme of one of my english classes was basically "is ignorance bliss?" i've known that you need both the highs and the lows the make like colorful and being here in Shanghai, where I'm doing almost everything for the first time, is showing me this truth.
(ok.... let the jokes begin, you know who you are!!)
On a less serious note, chinese soap opera's are ridiculous! Currently we are following the tale of 2 super power basketball players who i think are fighting over one girl! Also, Spongebob in Chinese? Yes please!

Unlike Lady Gaga i will pick up my telephone (or skype.e-mail)!

xin nian kuai le 新年快了
thats happy new years!

xoxo
Aryn