My Room at ECNU

By the luck of the draw, I managed to get a single room to myself for the 12 days I'll be in Shanghai. I am staying, along with the other Villanova students, in a faculty guest house located on the ECNU campus, which is in the middle of Shanghai, but is actually a very quite, clean and peaceful sanctuary for higher learning. Everyone is very busy here - students running and exercising until late at night, other students studying and going to and from the various buildings. (See pictures below of my room and the view of the campus and city from my room).






After a traditional, mutli-course meal at the faculty center, a group of us ventured across campus to find the "back gate" (the campus is a walled compound with two gates that close for the night at eleven pm). Immediately after stepping off-campus, the peace and serenity of the China I had known for the last two hours was shattered. Beggars sat on streetcorners asking for change, young, defiant-looking students darted in and out of various shops, people solicited you for phone cards and pirated DVDs.

Very little English is anywhere to be seen in China, and, unlike other countries closer to the U.S., nowhere takes U.S. dollars (I converted $300 U.S. dollars into about $2200 yuan upon landing at the airport). Our search for a beer led us past many shops and crowds of people, despite it being 9 pm on Sunday night. Crossing major streets required unprecedented courage as cars, bicyclers and busses treated stoplights and traffic signs as mere suggestions. Eventually, we found a somewhat Americanized place, rather deserted, which had several cold Tsing Tao's - the most common Chinese-brewed beer. We got to know each other a little better than the cramped flight could permit, before calling it a night - all of us exhausted from a laborious day of travelling.