What about work?!?

First day of work…I was seriously a little bit nervous about this day since it decides whether I am having a good or maybe not so good time here in China.

At ten in the morning I met my program coordinator Catherine from “Roots&Shoots” at a train station in Pudong, the part of the city which is located east of the Huangpu River. The train ride took me about 50 minutes so the distance is ok. Together we went to the office of my new employer. On the way to the office Catherine explained to me that it is a local NGO so they don’t really speak English. After the first shock was over I thought about why my organization would place me somewhere I can´t understand what my tasks are.

As we entered the office (a very small one with five people working there fulltime) Summer introduced herself as my new “boss”. Surprisingly she could speak English but pretty shitty one. In a small conference room she gave me a introduction about what their NGO is doing but to be honest…I didn’t really get it. What I understood was that they are having a organic farm in the Qingpu District in the so called “Communitiy Shared Agriculture” (CSA) style. A CSA farm is practically a bio-farm where you have some “shareholders” who are paying a certain amount of money to the farmer at the beginning of the year without knowing what exactly they get. They trust the farmer that he is having a good harvest and they will get their e. g. vegetables frequently delivered or they can pick them up. The farmer will just provide the food he is harvesting. The whole work is just for providing excellent vegetable or fruits and not for any economical reasons. Sounds a little bit like Hippie-style farming (in fact it was that in the beginning) but it is actually quite environmental friendly.

But back to the essential…on this farm my organization, which is called “Green Oasis”, is providing some kind of lessons for school classes to learn more about environmental sustainability and environmental protection. I hope I got it right, if not I will tell you later.

So I got back to the office and sat down on what will be my desk for the next 8 month. After I installed all the Wi-Fi stuff I got my first task: reading, reading about what my organization is doing AND a PowerPoint-presentation about how harmful “bad” food (too much sugar, additives, with chemical fertilizer cultivate etc.) is to everybody…in CHINESE! So please if somebody knows how to say “chemical fertilizer is changing cell-structure of a potato” it’s the right time to speak up…I didn’t and I most certainly forgot it after I let my iPod translate it. As you can imagine it was kind of hard translating and verifying all the example and facts in the presentation. But I hope in some weird way it helped me improving my Chinese, if not I probably going to kill myself ;-)

At 5:30 pm usually my day in the office would and but I had to work a little longer. They told me that the working hours are from 9 to 5:30 so it is not that bad. AND for Shanghai-level an hour to get to work is pretty short timeJ

So that’s it. I could tell you some more about how my second work day was (I visited the organic-farm…it was pretty cool to see actually a little bit more green than the green of the cabs) but I won´t! ;-) BUT what I can tell you is how my third day of working was…not working! Got free the whole day. Great start in my first week of work.

As its national holiday from tomorrow on maybe won´t be able to provide information about my magnificent life here in SH. But maybe will prove different…first I gotta tell Shanghai that I am really back ;-)

Till than have a good one!

L.

Haaave you met Jane Goodall?!

…I have! On last Friday during the annual “Roots&Shoots” festival that was held at the Gezhi Highschool in the centre of Shanghai. The festival started at 3 pm. From 3 to 5 pm we had do help at several workshops and at the registration. I myself had to “help” at a “Do-it-Yourself” T-shirt design workshop. But in the end my help was not needed and I only stood around doing nothing. Actually was this “DIY” workshop a contest what I didn’t know till the end ;-)

During those workshops Dr. Jane Goodall visit several activities and presentations by school classes or sub-organizations of “Roots&Shoots”. It was quite funny walking next to her and she was friendly to everybody and very, very interested in all the volunteers work.

But of course the best thing about her visiting our organization (actually it is hers) was her speech she gave at 6 pm. Before she started several volunteers or programs were awarded and an introduction was given. We celebrated the 50^th anniversary of Jane Goodalls “Gombe” chimpanzees project in Tanzania and the 11^th anniversary of “Roots&Shoots – Shanghai”. In a short video the “Gombe” project was explained with wonderful pictures of Jane Goodall in the Tanzanian jungle.

Afterwards her speech FINALLY started. Jane Goodall is now 76 years old and you can see that she has been up in the world her whole life, but as soon as she starts to speak I forgot about her being about four times older than I am. She still has a very nice sense of humors and she started with some little jokes. But when she came to environmental protection something changed both in her eyes and her voice. She became serious and not just an addressing, faking serious but an honest and purely concerned serious. As I looked in her eyes I saw that she meant every single word coming out of her mouth like it was meant to be. I can imagine that she really puts her lifeblood in all of her projects. One of her points was that there is no line between animals/the nature and human beings.

As simple as it sounds and even widely used (too often for my taste) her main message was: Never give up! Because it’s so often used it starts to kinda annoy me but as Jane Goodall said it I really thought that this is the right way of dealing with environmental protection. Maybe it is the way with it you should deal with everything but it still had in some strange way an impact on me when Dr. Jane Goodall said this. To encourage us all she gave a wonderful example: When you seed just a little grain after some time it is growing ROOTS and SHOOTS. Those tiny little roots manage to get to the water deep down in the earth and on their way down into the earth they are so powerful that they can even move rocks. It´s the same when you look at the shoots. As small and tiny this shoot might be in the end it is able to burst through the soil, even when it´s full of rocks. The “moral” of this story connected with the “Never give up” stuff she said made her attempt to “rescue” the environment very clear.

When I arrived in Shanghai at first I wasn’t sure if my work in a NGO would have any impact but after Jane Goodalls speech I had hope that I can do something helpful. In the end I even got to touch her arm when we had a group picture with many volunteers…I felt very enlighten after I touched her arm ;-)

If I was seriously inspired by Jane Goodall or not and if I really can have an impact in some way…we will see when I start to work! So be tensed about tomorrow’s first working day reportJ

Cheers!

L.

Where there is a Goodbye there is a Hello

The final day arrived: Yesterday I left my “Welcome-Family” to move to my permanent host-family. At about 10 am my new family picked me up to take me to their home. On the evening before I had a great time with my “Welcome-Family”. I really felt like I would be a real family member and not just a stranger staying at their home. They even offered me to stay at their home whenever I need a place to crash or when I am visiting China. As they said this it was not like the usual politeness of Chinese people but honest sympathy for me as their “host-SON”. I got to admit that I missing them a little.

But finally I am now in my new home. First of all excluding me there are four other people living here. The mother Angela, the father (I don’t really know how to call him), the younger Sister Fisher and an “Ayi” who is a mixture of a real aunt and some kind of a cleaning lady. Fisher and Angela are both very good in English, the father can speak too but our Ayi does even not speak Mandarin. She uses a mixture of Shanghai-accent and Mandarin which I CAN´T understand at all. But she is very nice and she cooks pretty well.

As I arrived there were even three more members of the family at our home. Angela’s mother, her sister and her nephew Ding ding who is a funny 6 years old who can speak a little English. He has that funny mixture of childish craziness and hilarity. Talking to him was very funny. Together with them we had lunch and afterwards I unpacked my bag and “inspected” my room. I have a big bed, a big wardrobe, a small couch, a desk for study and even a TV in my room. SO actually it is kind of a nice room I gotta admitJ. But in some strange way I don’t feel really connected to them on the first sight. I think this kinda feeling will disappear within time. In the evening we had the traditional “Mid Autumn Festival” dinner. The food was good and the people were nice. I was very happy that I didn’t have to eat too much moon-cakes (traditional bakery stuff which is veeery sweet and filled with smashed beans), but instead I ate pig-ears! Strange taste but ok, wouldn’t like to eat every day…

The “Mid Autumn Festival” is like the Chinese “Thanksgiving”. They are celebrating the beginning of the harvest. It is the second most important festival in China after the Chinese New-Year. Usually the whole family comes together and re-unites and spends the whole day with each other.

So I had quite a good evening and everything. And today we got better and better along the whole time. They even gave me a water boiler, my own tea, and two cups ;-)

Tomorrow another huuuuuuuge highlight will be in my “schedule”: Jane Goodall, the mother of all chimpanzees, will give a speech at a “Jane Goodall Institute – Roots&Shoots” event (they are the guys who are providing everything to me work, hostfamily etc.). I heard that she has a breathtaking way to talk people and even just her aura is inspiring to other people! I am really looking forward for her speech and maybe I am going to get a chance to talk to her in person or just shake her hand:-D

So be “tensed” how Jane Goodall was like!

Take care

L.

Traditional China - Lost and Found!

After I was a little frustrated about the visiting to "Yu-Garden" last Friday, my family decided to have a trip to one of the nearby so called "water-towns". So in the morning we went to "Zhujiaojia", the "Venice of Shanghai". Even though Venice is just a tinylittle bit different they have actually a bridge at "Zhujiaojia" that looks like the small version of the "Rialto" in Venice. But enough of this.
As we arrived we went to a shop where a chinese guy was selling Jazz-CDs for about two Euros. My hostmum loooves Jazz so we spend quite a lot time there. The Owner of the place could not speak English, French or any other language he was selling but he had a GREAT sellection of music. I bought three CDs: "Music&Me" by Micheal Jackson (it is crazy when you you hear the young-Michaels voice), a Elvis Costello and some Tibetian Jazz-Electronic CD which sounds sooo strange that it is actually really good and it has sound that is so unusual to here that you can not stop listening to it!

But this CD-shop was not the only highlight in the water-town. Event though it was boiling hot we wandered around the small, narrow streets and next to the channels. Suprisingly the village was not fully of tourist or lets say it were not so many of them that you would be really enoyed. There were several restaurants and teahouses right next to the channel that it was hard to make a decision where to go for lunch! All those places looked so fantastic peacefull. All shops where you could buy traditional paintings, instruments and other small and cheap stuff where located in up to 500 years old buildings. With the white painted walls and the black roofs they looked really authentic. Another highlight of the tour was the house, or better to say the estate of the former richest person in the village Ma Wen Qing. The compound of his estate was huge and I every corner I found something special or interesting. One of these special things was an huuge stone in the shape of a horse. The families name "Ma" means horse. Or in the middle of a small bamboo-forest there where a table with for seats made of stone. In those moments I felt more freedom and peace then you usually get in Shanghai. Nad maybe that was the mytic about this place. For me it was a welcomed change of scenery.

The most exciting thing in "Zhujiaojia" is the boat ride. You can pay a guy for taking you on a small trips through the channels and onto a small lake. From the waterfront it is ways more interesting to see the traditional village. Me and my hostfamily really enjoyed the time on the Chinese "gondola". I felt very satisfied to see that China is not just full of commerce and huge skyscrapers, even though I indeed love those sides of my living in Shanghai.
That trip was a good end for the weekend and gave me fresh power for the new week...though this fresh power was completly distroyed by the heat that I have to live with in SH! At 8 pm. it was still 31 °C hot, no wait...boooiling! It is so crazy to have such temperatures when theres constantly bad weather in Hamburg. Hopefully its going to be a little colder till Wednesday because this will be my "moving-day".

AAAAND i got some more information about my new hostfamily. In this family there are living four persons: Mother (accountant), father (engineer), daughter (15) and their grandmother (very very old!). I am not quite shure if I am soo happy with that but it will be definitly a huge experience for me:-)
This Wednesday also represents the start of the "Mid Autumn Festival" but about that more tomorrow;-)

Hope you are enjoying my reports!
Take care wherever you guys are in the world.
L.

Good Morning Shanghai!

Good Morning to everyone out of SH. 

Yesterday afternoon I went to one of the "world-famous" afternoon-activity in which I have to participate every day after school. But this time i had the feeling that it might actually be an really interresting and usefull activity - we were supposed to go the "Yu Garden". The "Yu Garden" is one of the last traditional chinese places in Shanghai in the sense of what you expect to be typical Chinese. So I will just give you a second to think about how a real traditional chinese place would look like...and yeah ist exeactly the same as you thought of it. The only problem is that everything is newly build and excpet the temple there is nothing actually "old". 

When I first entered the "Yu Garden" compound you are suprise to se such building in such a modern city. But as you walk along those buildings you take notice of something else...call it a overwhelming huge TV-screen, one of thousand jewellers, either very professional and expensive or cheap and in the "backyard-selling" style, or just literally thousands of people. As I entered the acutual compund (yeah, it is a compound in a compound) the people are getting more and more and with that the jewellers, the people who want to sell "real" Rolex to you and of course the small shops where you can buy chopsticks, chinese paintings, fans etc. But the most depressing thing was the fact that they had Starbucks, KFC and Haagen Dasz at the place. As you can imagine I felt like I am really in tradiotional China. When we went to the tea-house that is located in the middle of the compund we had to go over an "zick-zack"-bridge. In China they believe, going over this bridge will bring good luck to yourself. But when I went over that bridge I noticed something that let me laugh for a long time...to make this place more "mystic" (the teahouse is an a very small lake) they had steam coming out of some pipes. It was soooo hilarious! 

Our task was to buy something as a present for home. I got to admit, the Yu Garden is a real good place to buy something tradtional chinese but they shops are often try to sell them to westerners for an unreasonible amount of money so its good to have some chinese people with you or to speak chinese. Bargain is a must! And it is soo funny to do so:-)

At the end of our activity the "Yu Garden" was actual something really usefull to me. First of all I learned never to come back to the "Yu Garden" on a friday afternoon (my suggestion: winter-time, in the morning till early lunchtime) and second that chinese people know how to make profit out of everything even if it is not slightly related to the actual relevance of the place. And third is nearly the same as second: that in Shanghai the tradtional and the modern are clahing together like nowhere else. When I looked at the teahouse the first time I saw the old building AND the skyline of Pupong. This kind of a clash is fascinating and frustrating to some extend.

It is a real shame that we did not had the time to visit the actual temple because there are really old, tradtional buildings, not some fakes. When I visited the temple with my family Christmas 2007 it was so peacefull and nice in the temple. But I will definetly try to come there a second time in the morning or late evening. I do actually have nine mor month to do so!;-)

By the way I now know more about my new hostfamily...I live with a mum, a dad, a younger sister and a grandmother together and I giong to move there on Wednesday! Hope I am going to be lucky with this one!

I hope you are as tensed as I am about my new family;-)

Have a good one

L.

Welcome to China!

Its been more than a week and this is my first post! Good old China loved me sooo much that they wanted me to stay away from the evil stuff in the internet. But finally (its a big secret how I finally got free access) I am online!

After an eleven hour flight I finally arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport! On the plane I also met my fellow German volunteers who will be staying with me in Shanghai for the next nine month. Including me we are nine Germans but none of them will be working in my project.

The last week I spent practically just with having Chinese lessons on an university campus. We have three classes and I joined (after participating in a test that was actually an short interview) the "Intermediate-Class". The two other students in my class are REALLY good, and by REALLY GOOD I mean that good that it is very very hard to follow what they are doing during class. But I try my best and its getting better every day. In the afternoon I participate in some activities that are organized by my sending-organisation AFS and their cooperating agency "Jane Goodall Institute-Roots&Shoots". In those activities we have to use the learned stuff during thelessons... .... ....judgement prohibited;-)

After those activities I go back to the family I am living at. They live in the "Minhang District" in the south-west of Shanghai. Its about an hour away from downtown (its still very close for Shanghai-standard). This family is living in the so called "Vanke City Garden" - a place that is like a "usual" gated-community...except it is full of ten-story-buildings and has 25 000 citizens! Welcome to China! In my family are my host-mum Wendy, my host-dad I just call "Lao Ba" (old dad) and the dog Xiaopi. They are all very nice and relaxed and they really take good care of me. Nevertheless it is totally different to be in a chinese family, because we both have kinda different views of how life should be like, but they are still provide the enviroment for me to have a good life.

Next days I will upload some pictures that you can see how I am living.

The problem right now is that this is just my "welcome-family" and I gonna move to another one someday next week....hopefully! With my actual project I am working at its the same. Next week I will know more!

Till then I try to tell you as much as possible about how my life in the country of the dragon is like!

Holler

L.