Attention gamer friends!

This is where I'm sitting RIGHT NOW. It's a coffee house / LAN center named Tristram 5 minutes from my apartment. If they have Starcraft / Dota tournaments here, I'm going to enter. And lose horribly.

School pictures

The courtyard just outside my school

To the left of that courtyard, a bouncy palace that's set up every single day. Why wasn't there a  bouncy palace at school when I was growing up?

One of the classrooms, for the young 'uns

An IWB (interactive whiteboard) in one of the classrooms

More classroom!

One of the areas that gets full of kids and parents every day

The front desk

In the entryway. These are 5 characters that form the cohesive story for our older kids. There are animated cartoons, sound clips, songs, and powerpoints all integrated with their textbooks. It's all created by EF.

One of the big classrooms with Chris, one of our locals. :)

 The next pictures are of our Mid-Autumn Festival celebration. There was food and a surprising amount of beer provided for us. Hooray! (Sorry some of the pictures are dark. I'm bad at photography.)

Two people tie balloons around their left foot, then try to pop the other person's balloon. I won my match, and got some fancy EF swag shown below!

My lovely coworker Rachel displaying one of the flash cards I won.

Now I can learn the characters for all the important words!

Fancy winnings, all for popping a balloon.

Shanghaireland

As an example of the multicultural mishmash that is Shanghai, let me tell you about last night. One of my coworkers is an adorable, bouncy, happy little Irish bundle named Aisling who convinced us to go watch the Gaelic football finals. It was her team, Mhaigh Eo (pronounced Mayo), vs. the other guys. Gaelic football is sort of like rugby and soccer mashed together. It's a huge field populated by huge men wearing no protective gear who are beating the living piss out of each other to score points. Good fun.

Getting to the pub where the game was showing was bizarre. Aisling led the group along some street in the French Concession (a nice part of Shanghai), we took a sharp right, and suddenly we were surrounded by intense, rowdy, Irish soccer hooligans. The transition from "crowded Chinese street with food vendors and performing monkeys" to "Irish pub and Mhaigh Eo jerseys" was jarring, and took place in about 5 seconds flat. The game was being projected on a huge screen in the middle of the pub's courtyard. Unfortunately, the only picture I took turned out fuzzy, but I"ll post it eventually anyway.

Mhaigh Eo made another solid fan in me that night, and it's only partially because mayonnaise is delicious.

New apartment pictures

The view, inside and out. Also, it's RIGHT next door to an IKEA. Big selling point, I say.

Pre-departure pictures!

Today I Learned

My first actual teaching session taught me a few things:

-According to the kids, my feet are inhumanly large

-Getting hit in the face with a rubber ball is funny in any language

-When the kids ask for a rubber, they want an eraser

See? Teachers learn just as much as their students.

You want pretty young girl massage! You want!

Going shopping on East Nanjing Road as an obviously new and oblivious American meant being constantly assaulted by men and women who thought I was a prime customer for sexy massages. I said the phrase "Buyao, xie xie!" (No want, thank you!) dozens of times that evening. It became my new favorite phrase.

After a couple hours of almost exclusively saying "Buyao, xie xie," I saw a twentysomething Chinese lady making eye contact with me, and striding purposefully in my direction. When she got close enough, my practiced reflexes kicked in, and I preemptively said "buyao!"

Her: "Buyao what?"
Me: "Uhhhh.... massage."
Her (shocked and offended): "NO! No massage! Why you think I give massage?!"

I don't know if I've ever seen someone look more horrified. So, I did what came most naturally to me. I apologized profusely, gave her one of the more awkward hugs of my life, and walked away without making eye contact.

Oops.

Space Invaders

I've landed! I'm safe. For now.

Beginning with my flight from San Francisco to Beijing, I realized I'd have to reevaluate the size of my personal bubble. To my right was a very friendly man named Harvey who happily gave me hours of Mandarin lessons. To my left was a man I came to nickname "The Walrus." The Walrus seemed to think that, in addition to his seat, he was also entitled to half of mine. We didn't know any of the same words (except maybe how to say "beer" and "bathroom" in Mandarin, thanks to Harvey. Mission accomplished!), and he seemed oblivious to my awkward physical attempts to reestablish my territory. The Walrus wasn't mean or greedy. He was just very comfortable touching my left side. The Walrus goes where he pleases.

Since arriving at Shanghai, everyone has been incredibly nice and helpful. The EF facilities are impressive and much larger than I expected. Yesterday I visited the school where I'll be teaching, and was so happy to see that it was a colorful, kid-friendly, clean facility with tons of fancy high-tech equipment. I'll primarily use the classroom whiteboards as a touchscreen projector. As in, the image projected from the computer onto the whiteboard is controlled by me touching the whiteboard. I tap, drag, draw, etc, and things happen. It's like Minority Report. I really am living in the future! My fellow teachers were SO warm, excited, and welcoming. I'll be working with people from around the world, and they're all delightful.

Pictures soon.