First Official Week

This marks my second full week in Shanghai, my first of classes! Having Chinese every day for two hours is rough-we have a quiz on 15-20 new vocab words and 5-6 old grammar points every day, and I have my first test this Tuesday on Chapters 1 & 2. For as much fun as we're all having, I still think we're doing more work than most study abroad programs! My other classes are all really interesting, even though 3-hour class periods can get rough. A lot of the workload is on your own kind of stuff, which I like a lot more than something super structured.

What do I like even more than my classes? The fact that I will always have a three-day weekend! (I really need to look into this for next year) CIEE sets up a lot of one day trips for us to go on for free, so yesterday they took us to the Citygod Temple in Shanghai. It's Taoist and actually still in use, so people were worshipping there as tourists were walking around, which made us all feel kind of bad for them. It's also probably the biggest tourist trap I've been to so far, with a verifiable maze of streets full of cheap merchandise and delicious food. One of the CIEE tutors found us dumplings and I got my first Starbucks of the trip, so I was happy! Definite food coma =) There are also apparently gorgeous gardens, but we want to wait until spring when everything is in bloom before we go see them.

I guess that's all-this might get a little boring as I get used to the routine of classes, but I'll be doing a lot of other awesome things that I'll try and keep you updated on!