[Insert Job Description Here]

During training, we are told, “your service is what you make of it.” If you want to be out of site all the time, hanging out at the bar, sure, you can do that. Or you can make something amazing of it. To remove any doubts that last sentence might have created; almost all volunteers opt for the latter.

I opted for the latter as well and there are days where I'm out and about in Panama, living another day of my Peace Corps service, and it will dawn on me that, I get paid (as little as I do get paid haha) to be doing what I'm doing. I had one of those moments today when I was in the middle of the jungle hiking up to a water source. A fellow volunteer, in a different sector than water systems asked if I could come and take a look at his system. After that simple interaction, I was now out hiking with him in his community, which is about twenty times larger than mine, to offer what experience and knowledge I have to help assess the water issues being faced by the community. I'm going on a tangent too far, let's steer this back in with some pictures of where I was working today:

Crossing a stream on the way to the water system.

Finally arriving to the water source.

I've also had other amazing work experiences such as when I helped my regional leader deliver some documents to a future volunteer's community. Besides the fact that the area was absolutely beautiful, we got to eat lunch and hang out with the future host family for a bit. The father of the household told us a very interesting story about the roof tiles which his grandfather had constructed over 100 years ago and still survived to this day.

Passing a large orange farm on the way to the community.

The rainy season is in full swing and mud is everywhere.

After taking public transportation to the end of the road, hiking an hour into the community,
we  now have a guide to take us the rest of the way to the host family's house.

Look at that beautiful roofing.

Then there was the time that Engineers Without Borders (EWB) visited a fellow volunteer's site and cultural/language facilitators were needed. I got to spent a few days hiking about my friend's community assisting EWB in their trip.

Community guide leading the way to the next house.

Back when I was a member of EWB at Rutgers University, I had seen a GPS map that was constructed by a group member and I was interested in making my own. As part of my first three months in site, I was required to make a map, so I ended up making a GPS map.

...and then writing a guide for other volunteers to do the same.

I also had interest in solar panels and the neighboring community's health post had some problems with theirs...

These are just a few examples of the many cool work opportunities that Peace Corps offers. Of course not all of my cool opportunities revolve around work. I also give myself some breaks to...

Attend the Black Christ festival.

Party at carnival.

Spend Christmas in Santa Fe with other volunteers.

Travel to Peru.

Watch the US-Panama soccer game.

Attend the Sombrero Festival.

At times it’s hard to justify my time here, typically when I'm sitting at the lowest of lows of a slump in my service. But when I'm not sitting there, life is pretty awesome. Of course you cannot have the bad without the good and the same carries over to life in the States. However, Peace Corps has some pretty awesome good times to offer and I think it has been well worth it. (And for you too if you're considering joining!)

Haggling for Something More

When it comes to shopping in China, outside of the chain stores, haggling is the norm. If you don't learn the skill of it you'll walk away paying too much. If you're a foreigner you'll walk away paying too too too much. In my pursuit of purchasing presents for my return trip to America, I decided to buy a few scarfs. Out the gate the lady wanted $35 for one "100% silk scarf." At this point I'd been in the country for several months and had grown accustomed to bargaining and so my reaction was to laugh at the exorbitant price, and countered with a more reasonable price of $5. Bargaining was attempted on my part but the shop owner was relentless about lowering the price, until I walked away. As soon as I turned my back the price dropped to $5. It's rather funny how that works.

The same applies in Cambodia and Vietnam and if you don't bargain hard you're going to walk away a sucker every time. One night in Hoi An, after a day of tours, my friend and I sat finishing dinner. He was still hungry for more meat and I wanted the dessert I saw a few streets back. We parted ways and soon I was munching on a delicious bread of some kind. As I wandered back, I happened upon a bookstore. Having just finished my previous book, I decided to take a look. I got carried away since book prices are so cheap and ended up with three I wanted.

The bookstore owner started the bargaining at $17. Not quite happy with that price since I'd seen cheaper prices earlier i the day, I began my typical routine. Before I continue I have to make a quick interjection that the day was spent sipping beers and playing chess so I was a little off my game. As I offered my first price, he countered with $17 and a beer to celebrate the Tet holiday. We countered a few more times unsucessfully to convince each other. Until, probably due to the beers in my system, I countered with $17, one more beer, and the chance to hang out with his family until my tour bus was scheduled to leave.

It was an interesting look into a typical Vietnamese family's home life. The first floor was split with half being a book store and the other half being a living room. One of my tour guides had previous informed me that land is very expensive in the ciyt so many familes will convert a part of their home into a shop. The living room portion of the first floor was very simple. There was no furniture, only a mat on the floor. I didn't get a tour so I didn't see the rest of the house. I also asked to take pictures but didn't want to be potentially disrespectful so I only took three.

As for the family, I was introduced to the store owner's wife, son, niece, and mother who you can see in the picture. He was the only one who could speak English. Sadly I didn't get to ask much more since I only had 30 minutes to begin with until I had to leave.

Hopefully I can bargain my way into similar encounters again in the future. The cost of the books was well worth the experience.

Every Day is an Adventure

Every morning I wake up at about 7:20. This gives me about 15 minutes to be fully prepared before heading out the door. I walk for a few minutes and take subway line 2, to 7, to 1, to 5 with roughly five minute transfer walk in between. Then I exit the metro, walk another fifteen minutes, and arrive at work an hour and a a half later. I do this twice a day, every day. Why you ask? Because I wanted the city but my company wanted the suburbs. Luckily I utilize this time to read, practice Chinese, play games, or sleep. One day I instead of my usual time passers, I decided to bring a camera to highlight some of the interesting things I see on my daily commute. 

These are x-ray machines that you're supposed to place your bags in. Most people ignore them and the security guards don't seem to care.

TVs in the metro stations. There are also smaller versions in the trains.

Too much reflection to fully express this picture. This right here I would consider the normal amount of people for a train. Seats fully taken with a lot of people standing.

Had to be sneaky for this. For 66% less than a taxi fare, these guys will give you rides on their motorcycles to work. They generally drive like maniacs. Took me several months but I finally took a ride. 

I think the irony of this picture is lost in the small size. The background says no dumping into the water.

It's interesting where you find houses in China. This road is completely full of factories except for this house, if you can even call it that. If you look close enough a kid is peeing on the street.

If you're a Shanghai resident than you can use these bikes. Being a resident of a city isn't quite the same in the United States. I'm not sure of the exact requirements but of the 22 million people living in China, 9 million are not residents. 

One of the paths I walk along to work.

What does poor really mean?

Never really venturing outside of the United States before it was hard to imagine what life is like on the outside. While there are many aspects of life that vary from country to country, right now I want to focus on wealth. A typical soft drink in America costs about $1.60 and in Shanghai it costs about $0.40. A typical music player in America costs about $300 and in Shanghai it costs about $300. How is it possible? While you would expect a music player to cost about $75 in China such is not the case. It appears that anything that could potentially be a necessity meets the standard of living price adjustment while anything considered a luxury does not. For the people of Shanghai this means that vacations abroad, fancy electronics, and nice cars are reserved for the elite few. Now this doesn’t seem so bad but consider the fact that Shanghai is one of the most expensive cities in China. This means that there is many areas of the country that are much poorer. But this is China, and China is doing rather well.  However, if we continue along this train of thought, we can imagine the best cities in places like Africa might rival some of the lesser parts of China. I know I'll never be able to walk a mile in the poorest shoes, because such shoes are nonexistent, but I'm slowly starting to understand how truly lucky we are to be brought up in such good conditions. 

Battle of the Firewall

It's been tough trying to post these last few days since the program I use to connect to Blogger, Facebook, Youtube, etc has been giving me problems. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a program with a monthly fee that is much more stable. Blog posts should occur more often now. 

Wo bu ming bai ni!

I have to say, I’m glad I started this blog because I’m scared to think about where my English would be today without it. The people I interact with on a daily basis are Chinese, French, German, and Indian. Missing from this list are American, British, Australian, etc. Thankfully almost all of the people I interact with on a daily basis can speak English, but not all of them can speak it well. This leads to me greatly simplifying my grammar and vocabulary and slowing the rate at which I speak. After eight months here, I can only hope this blog and my limited interactions with my friends and family back home will be able to lessen the blow to my grasp of the English language.

P.S. the other day I was writing some stuff down and wrote “word” as “yord” and “check” as “chek.” …Uh oh.

America Town

Whenever I’m missing American food and want to pay four times the average price of a Chinese meal, I head to Munchies. This restaurant is about the closest you can come to American food without being in America. It’s got hamburgers, wraps, sandwiches, and Mexican. Not feeling too adventurous after my run in with Mexican food, I decided it would be best to stick to my friend’s suggestion of hamburgers which was a good one because they’re amazing. Sadly, my hamburger isn’t accompanied by the smells of barbeque, the sounds of football, and the sight of red, white, and blue but for now they are a good enough. (And no I didn’t get paid to write that.)

I went to China to become an Engineer and Came Back a Teacher

I think the best thing about China is that they don’t drink coffee and as a result I’m not in charge of coffee runs. The printer is also about two feet away so I’m not in charge of making copies of documents either. Thanks to being born in a native English speaking country, I’ve been given the chance to partake in some projects with a much larger role than a typical intern. One such project was being in charge of writing the final document for the standards of design for my engineering group. Outside of engineering, I’ve been picked to lead an English discussion three hours each week. By the time I finish my internship I’ll be qualified for ESL teaching positions. Sadly, not everything is positive but fortunately the negative isn’t so negative. Not being able to speak Chinese has led to me missing just about every word spoken in meetings except for the rare occasions where the presenter speaks English or one of my coworkers translates. Outside of meetings we sit in an open environment with four desks facing each other. I managed to get placed with the youngest and best English speaking people in my group so time spent outside meetings are generally pleasant. Overall, being a native English speaker in a Chinese company has led to many great experiences and opportunities that I would not have found in an equivalent American company. 

Stairs, Elevators, and Escalators

I do believe escalators might be one of the only annoying things about China. They exist in every subway, food store, and mall. I generally don’t find them annoying in food stores and malls because I visit these stores at most once a week. The subway however, I’ll see about fifty escalators a week, which isn’t even an exaggeration, they’re everywhere! My gripe with the escalators is not their existence; it’s what they do to the people who use them. When a busy train lets off a large group of people at a metro stop, every single person will rush for the escalator. With almost everybody refusing to take the stairs, a line will quickly form where the people at the back are easily waiting two minutes to go up fifteen stairs. Yes I know, “just take the stairs,” you say, and I do. Except now I’m climbing through a massive surging crowd of people attempting to get through to the stairs. Once the stairs have been reached I’ll rush up and try to beat the crowd to the next set of stairs. At this point, I’m ahead of most of the people. At the next set of stairs I decide to risk it and use the escalator this time, hoping not to get stuck behind people who decide to take up the whole escalator. My path is clear and I quickly move up the escalator, taking two steps at a time, this sixty step escalator will be finished in no time. But as soon as I begin, it’s over. A few steps ahead a couple has decided to stop and take up the whole escalator. Instead of asking them to move, the following people just stop and stand as well. I’ve risked it and lost, now to stand and miss the next train. Next time I’ll be sure to stick to the stairs. 

That About Sums it Up

Similar

Thanks to the internet, my (and possibly yours) expectation of China was menus consisting of such wonderful things as dog and insects. The reality is that, at least for Shanghai, these foods are not very common. Just like in America, there’s the usuals of  chicken, beef, pork, fish, and vegetables.

Cheap

I’ve gotten rather used to the prices here and sure will miss them when I move home. On average I’m spending about $38 a week food shopping and my coworkers say I still pay too much. In America, I’ve come to the realization many years ago that eating out is expensive and for the most part will not be of a similar price to buying  the food in the food store. I took this with me to China and would bring my breakfast everyday to work. For about 85 cents I would eat a banana and a breakfast bar. The problem with this is that this meal is both not filling and American. To kill these two problems with one breakfast, I decided to give the street vendor outside the subway a try. For 70 cents, I could get two meat steamed dumplings and a soy milk. I must say that I’m a little embarrassed that it took me two months of work to give these a try because they are amazing. Just goes to show what can happen if you decide to step out of your comfort zone to try new things.

Awesome

So I originally intended to put pictures of awesome food here. Two things happened. First I only took one picture. Second, I cut the English description off. These are supposed to be Blueberry Lay's. I promise I will take more awesome(and weird) pictures on my next adventure to the food store.

Weird

While dog isn’t common, there are some other equally bizarre things that are. The meat section of the food store could be equated to the beyond of Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I've wandered in there a few times on accident to find random animal parts just piled up in their respective open freezers with no plastic covering. I’d like to believe that I’m more adventurous now with new foods but I don’t think that adventurousness will ever drive me to buy meat in China. However, I have motivated myself to try chicken heart and duck blood. I was also tricked into eating cow tongue. Sadly, I believe that my motivation stops somewhat short of foods like this and I did not enjoy them. I’ve failed of my dream to be able to compete with the openness of a garbage disposal to new foods but that’s ok; I’m happy where I am.

That Was Then, This is Now.

So here is the weather for the next ten days. Also just wanted to note that for the seven day gap between weather forecasts looked exactly the same. At least it's cooled down. 

Three Months Down Part 2

Night and Day

I packed my bags with several hygiene products that I expected to be in short supply upon arriving in China. I fully expected that China would be an extremely different place than America in all aspects. On my first trip to the food store I found that every item I packed in fear of not having could be found on the shelves. During the first few days I quickly discovered that almost all of my expectations of China were wrong. Another expectation that was completely wrong was that day to day­­­ life would be completely different. After three months, I’ve found myself waking up, going to work, coming home, showering, eating dinner, relaxing and going bed. As for the weekends, they’re filled with the typical fun and relaxation also found in the American routine. Because of this, I have come to believe that all people really aren’t that different, we go about our lives in generally the same way.

English and Chinese … and German­­…­ and French… and Indian… and … 

My feelings toward the language barrier are more dependent upon the day and less upon the amount of time I’ve spent here. I knew it was going to be a challenge coming into this so I’ve tried to be accepting of the fact that all my coworkers and roommates (no native English roommates) will tend to speak their native language and not the language I know. I’m lucky enough to already be fluent in the common language, English, that everybody knows a bit of. Thankfully, I’m not in the same situation as a French or Indian person coming to China who will only be in conversations where nobody speaks the native language.  My Chinese is progressing rapidly, sadly not quickly enough to be conversational before I leave, but at least I’ve got a good foundation so that if I ever return to China, the language barrier will be a non existent problem. 

Three Months Down Part 1

Two days from now will mark three months since I boarded a plane and left everything I knew behind. While this statement is of a very dramatic nature, the reality of the situation is not so shocking.

When it's one o'clock here, it's one o'clock there, what's the difference? Twelve hours.

While there is the obvious fact of distance separating me from my home, there is also the time difference. I couldn’t exactly comprehend what a twelve hour time difference meant until I lived it myself. Family members are not home when I leave for work and when I get home from work they’ve already left for work. Generally this means that communication with family is reserved for the weekend only. As far as friends go, generally only after 10pm will I have a chance to talk to them. You can take this how you like; personally I think it’s not so bad. I’m grateful to have the chance to talk to these people with the time I have.

I thought all you could eat was dog and snake...

The foods I miss are slowly starting to fill up my thoughts more and more with each passing day. I would love to be sitting at Qdoba or an all you can eat breakfast buffet right now. Sadly, these are not popular food choices among Chinese people. Luckily, Shanghai is home to just about every other food imaginable. Since arriving, I've managed to find suitable restaurants for Greek, German, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, American, Korean, Brazilian, Indian, and Mongolian. In terms of food stores, I know of several places to buy almost all of the foods I could possibly want. Sadly, this solution for food cravings comes with a markup of between two hundred and four hundred percent. For now I've managed my desire to buy these foods, preferring instead to save for travel. Although the desire to save for travel is strong, I expect at least once or twice I’ll cave in and spend $3 on a drink that costs $1 in America.

I wish I was kidding.

In case you didn't know, and you probably don't because I didn't know until yesterday, there's a massive storm headed for Shanghai. When I originally saved this picture from the weather.com report, I had no idea of the storm. I saved it to note the absurdity that is Shanghai weather. It was not until yesterday that my coworkers brought up the topic of the storm did I realize what was headed my way. Back in New Jersey, two inches of snow would warrant a big notice of impending doom in the coming days on the weather.com website. However, a storm with winds of potentially 100mph or so isn't of much importance it seems. Thanks weather.com!

P.S. The above weather forecast has been typical of Shanghai for the past week or two.

My Abode

Only two months late. Here are some pictures of my room. Picked the smaller room to save money for future traveling. Also pictured is a view from outside of my apartment. Sadly for some reason the Chinese Walmart stocked either flowers or purple sheets and purple is what I ended up with.  

To what lengths must we sacrifice?

A quick note about the prices, I converted them to USD so ignore the rather odd looking pricing.

Thanks to Rutgers' rather annoying engineering graduation requirements, an internship in Shanghai would require withdrawing from school for a year. The problem is, I've only planned about eight months of my time off for China and still have several months free time to fill. Since I'm already on the other side of the world and with no desire to return home just yet, I've began thinking of where to go. Before even arriving in China I dreamed of traveling across Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railway, eventually ending up in Moscow and then on to Europe to try and work or volunteer in Spain. Such a trip would not work on my current budget so I began looking for a new place to live. 

My first stop in my apartment hunt began with browsing two housing websites geared for English speakers. After almost two weeks of looking, nothing turned up. Next, I turned to my coworkers for advice. (A quick note before I continue, the Chinese in general are very helpful people. I will deeply miss this when I return to the United States.) They said I could save a decent amount of what I'm spending now on housing by moving out of the city and closer to work. This idea was rather tempting and I decided to think it over. Upon arriving at work the following day, my coworkers notified me that they'd gone home and spent some time searching Chinese housing websites and found some nice cheap places for me. 

Around the same time, one of my roommates was in the process of moving out of a rather small and somewhat cheaper room. I was temped to make the move to a smaller room in the same apartment but I couldn't justify saving $46 a month for a room that is roughly ten feet by six feet with no window. Thankfully my roommate made a good suggestion that had previous been alien to me due to previous living in America, bargaining. Bargaining is everywhere in China, besides your chain stores, you can typically bargain everywhere. I am determined to get good at bargaining since the last time I bargained I got ripped off and overpaid about $46 on a $123 dress suit, I decided this was a perfect opportunity. With the assistance of my coworkers and some of my own good thoughts on bargaining, I set to work lowering the price on the smaller room. 

The original price of the small room paid for by the previous tenant was $384. Since apartments in the suburbs can run as low as $261 for a nice room, that became my goal. With several back and forth text messages (Can't start bargaining in person, you'll end up failing miserably!) with my landlord, the price slowly dropped. Sadly, I didn't make it to my goal of $261 but still managed $307 and somehow managed to get free Chinese lessons from my landlord's husband and free meals at his restaurant. 

With cost being a much smaller issue, it was time to decide if moving to the suburbs would be a better fit. To clear my thoughts I decided to utilize a pros and cons list to decide what would be the best move. As I began to write the list I quickly realized I could end up in a very bad situation which could potentially make the next six months of living absolutely horrible. I've managed to find probably one of the best landlords one could find in Shanghai. She has lived in the United States for four years, will come within the hour to fix any problem, and is a very friendly person. From here, a new landlord could only go downhill. I've had bad experiences with my two previous landlords and not too excited to end up with a landlord that never shows up to fix problems or doesn't speak any English. Next up was the roommate issue. The people I live with are all great people and don't have any notable problems with any of them. I continued to write out my list and the cons far out numbered the pros of moving out.

Thankfully the list wasn't too balanced and a clear choice was made to remain living at my current location. I could have saved another $46 a month if I moved out of the city but I could have found myself in a position making me miserable for the duration of my stay in China. 

Lesson Learned:  In the pursuit of a goal, sacrifices may be a necessity but don't make so many sacrifices that the journey is ruined.  Remember, the journey can be just as important as the destination.

The Perks

As I began to search for an apartment to call home during my stay in Shanghai, the word ayi kept popping up in many of the listings. With a quick Google search, I discovered that an ayi is the same as a maid. For a few dollars a month, having to clean becomes irrelevant. At first the idea of never having to clean strongly appealed to me. After living with several guys for two years and having to clean up after myself and the group, I was ready for a change. The first week was great, I came home to a clean room and apartment and didn't have to do anything. With each passing week I've slowly started to enjoy the idea less and less of an ayi. Here is a person whose sole job is to clean up after me. That thought continued to rattle around in my brain until eventually I started to look my door when the ayi would come. She still cleans the other rooms and the common area but no longer will she clean up my mess.

Lesson Learned: How can you learn from your mistakes if someone else is fixing them?