Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai :)
Hey! So it’s 10:30pm on a Sunday
evening and I’ve finally got a chance to sit down and write this week’s blog. Living
in Shanghai, one of the largest cities ever, definitely provides for a proper
city life – busy, awesome & always something to do! I must admit, this year
more than last year, I’ve been super busy. This is probably because of the
shaky start with my living situation, change in schools and increase in classes
this year! Last year I taught just grade one and grade three; whereas this year
I’m teaching grade 1,2,3,4 and 5! This leads to more lesson planning.
Nevertheless, I’ve got a routine forming, I’m becoming an expert at lesson
planning and this increased workload is actually preparing me for what it may
be like when I’m doing my PGCE, and becoming a qualified teacher next year!
This week has been a productive yet
enjoyable week. It daunted on me, when I said goodbye to Sunaina as she went
off to travel to Guiling & Beijing, that I needed to get some money coming in
before pay day – as I couldn’t afford to travel too far this Mid-Autumn
Festival. My first pay day is in two weeks, on the 30th September,
and so right now money is slightly tight. At first this disheartened me, but
rather than letting it get me down, I decided to be proactive and positive. I filled
my Monday and Wednesday evening in with tutoring, in which I earned about
seventy pounds! This meant working all day, having no break and heading
straight to tutor English from 5-6, and then 7-8. I was absolutely EXHAUSTED
but the incentive was the money! It means I might get a small trip booked for
this weekend, or atleast explore one of Shanghai’s many beautiful ancient water
towns, such as Tongli and Xitang.
In keeping positive about not being
able to travel, I decided to keep in mind that this was probably one of the
first Chinese holidays/long weekends that I had actually stayed in Shanghai
for. So after working a three-day intense working week filled with work all day
and then tutoring/workshops in the evenings, by Thursday I had a well-deserved
lie-in! Unfortunately, typhoon hit Shanghai the one weekend I was actually
eager to explore and stay in Shanghai – typical! So all day Thursday I stayed
in, cooked lovely home-made Chinese food with my new housemate, did lots of
reading, work, lesson-planning, did a good old taobao online shopping order, caught
up on Eastender’s and literally relaxed. That evening I met up with Edward, a
good friend of mine, that I’d met through teach English in China a year ago. In
true tradition, we went to Tianzifang, to our favourite Indian restaurant named
Lotus Eatery. It was so wonderful to sit down comfortable, have a good old
Tikka Masala, a bottle of wine and a catch-up! Due to the national holiday,
neither of us had work the next day, so we even spontaneously went to a bar
afterwards!
The next day, I woke up with a
slight red wine mixed with white wine hangover! I was supposed to have a
one-to-one MMA class with my Coach but due to bad-timings we rearranged so I
slept a little more and then finally got up to head to my Chinese lesson at 2 o’
clock. As I continue to get my routine sorted out here, I really want to make
proper, dedicated time towards my Chinese. Someone reminded me recently that I
AM IN CHINA, this is the perfect opportunity to really delve into learning the
language. I feel motivated.
After my successful Chinese class, I
did some shopping as there are still various things I need and want! A particularly
awesome buy was my selfie stick from Miniso. I finally arrived home, shattered
from shopping, and had a quick nap for getting ready for a friend’s birthday
meal & drinks! I got up, ready and headed to Gemma’s; a nice Italian restaurant
where my friend, Diana’s, meal would be. It was so lovely to catch-up with all
my work friends as I hadn’t seen a lot of them since before the Summer! After a
lovely meal and catch-up, I decided to opt out of the bar afterwards and head
home to sleep! Maybe I’m getting old… but I was exhausted and craving my bed!
The next day my friend Furkan and I
had a wonderful day planned. We had thought, due to the typhoon, it would be
ridiculously rainy so we planned lots of indoor activities around Shanghai.
Surprisingly, the weather was hot and sunny for the rest of the weekend! So, we
probably could have gone to the water towns we originally planned! Anyway, we
met at people’s square and had a lovely brunch before heading to China Art
Museum.
China Art Museum was amazing! It’s
one of the largest Art Museums in Asia and was truly amazing to wander around
and enjoy.
After spending a lovely couple of
hours around the museum, we had a few hours to explore before our 4:30pm cinema
showing to see the Jason Bourne movie. So we took the metro to East Nanjing
Road, walked past the incredible bund, with the sun shining and down one of my
favourite roads, Fuzhou Lu. We grabbed coffee, explored the book stores and finally
arrived at the Cinema.
The Cathay Theatre/Chinema is one of
Shanghai’s oldest cinema’s, built back in 1930. We watched the action-packed
movie, Jason Bourne, and endured some popcorn! The move was gripping and cool.
Afterwards, however, we were more than starving. We walked towards Jing’an
Temple and went to a great Turkish restaurant for dinner. The food was amazing
and there was even belly dancing. It had been such a nice day exploring my
home, my city, Shanghai.
The next day (today) I needed to
have a productive day to finish off lesson planning, do other work, apply for
my PGCE (applications have opened so I need to get applying), prepare for
tutoring and other stuff! I went to the Shanghai Foreign Language Book Store’s Café
and spent my day working away. By the evening I was relaxed and met up with a
friend, Tom, who has just come out to teach English in China, and was
visiting from Wuhan! We had some street food, a beer, a catch-up and called it
a night! I’m now going to sleep as it’s almost 11:30pm and I’ve gotta be up at
6am to start my working week! It’s been an amazing weekend… I wanted to keep
busy as this weekend was my brother’s 18th birthday celebrations;
things like this make moving away difficult, but the new friends, the new
place, the new experiences are what make it worthwhile and awesome!
Sabrina xxx
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