My apartment in Shanghai

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share a short video with everyone. It's of my apartment in Shanghai. It's small and cozy and it is located in a great place, just a three minute walk from the subway station. Hope you guys enjoy the video!

Los primeros dias en China

Shanghai Financial Center

I finally have time to write something about my journey in China. For those that don't know, I am in Shanghai for school and work. I am studying international business in Concordia University (CUI) while doing research in China. I have been extremely busy since the day I stepped onto Chinese soil. The whole flight from New York to Shanghai was about 16 hours, with a connecting flight in Hong Kong. It was extremely excruciating, but so far it has been worth it.

At the airport I got picked up by Denny, one of the teachers at the high school I work at, which is called Shanghai Jin Cai International High School. He speaks English really well and has been really helpful. The ride from the airport was about 40 minutes so it wasn't that bad. Shanghai reminds me of a bigger and cleaner New York...

We arrived at the dormitory where I was staying at before (Now I live in my own apartment!), and I had to give Denny my passport. But guess what!? I didn't have it! I had somehow lost it... So it was the first day in China and I had no passport, I didn't know what to do and was kind of pissed but I just remained chill, because there would have been no point in fussing over it. Denny called the airport and they told him that they would call him back if they found it.

Me at the Riverside, across from the Bund

We decided to just get something to eat while we waited so we went to Carrefour--kind of like a French Walmart, where we ate a bowl of noodles the size of Yankee stadium! While we waited the airport called and luckily they had found my passport! So we had to go all the way back to the airport to get my passport. We went to the airport, I got my passport back, and felt extremely relieved. That was my exciting first day in Shanghai, and I was sure it wasn't going to be my last. 

The next day I had to work! I know, work after being in the air for 16+ hours sucks! but I had no choice. At work I met all my coworkers and they all seemed pretty cool. There are two other people from Concordia that will be working with me at Jin Cai--Ruth & Fallon--so at least I went in knowing a couple of people. I won't talk much about work, because well work is work.

My first weekend in Shanghai the first thing I did was go out to dance salsa! I found out about this bar called Azul Tapas Bar, and it was awesome! It's on the last floor of a eight floor hotel, and it has a very nice view of Shanghai. Next time I go I will try and take a picture of it. The bar turns into a full-on salsa party after 10pm and I was surprised at all the amazing dancers that were in Shanghai. Sadly most of them dance either salsa on1 or Cuban salsa. The girl that told me about the club did dance salsa on2 so I danced with her a few times and she is a pretty amazing dancer. 

While I was at the bar I saw this guy that seemed to know everyone at the bar so I introduced myself. He was Chinese, but he was from Canada. He already has six years in Shanghai and seemed to be pretty popular among all the salseros/as there. He started introducing me to a few people and he gave me the scoop on all the girls that he knew that danced on2. He introduced me to this girl named Anna (I think that's her name) who danced pretty well too. There were a few wai guo ren (foreigners) there besides me, but not much. 

After a while, most of the girls just started coming up to me to dance so it cut down the work for me of trying to find out who I could dance with. They also played some merengue and bachata, and it felt really great dancing those, especially bachata since I love listening and dancing to it. I left pretty early from Azul because I was living in the dormitories and I knew they would probably lock the gate and I wouldn't be able to get in. Overall it was an amazing night and it took all the stress away that had accumulated from my new job.

The next night I went to a small social with one of my friends from the CUI program. She's probably the only Dominican in Shanghai besides me... Neil--another one of my classmates at CUI--met us at the social a few minutes later. We stayed there for a bit, but then Mallissa told me about another club called Mural where she said we should go. We went to Mural, which was a another Latin club in Shanghai. There was a live band playing, supposedly the woman singing was Colombian. She sang pretty well. I drank a couple of mojitos which were actually good, even though they put too much ice in them, and danced most of the night. Mural was fun, but it wasn't as good as Azul. After Mural we got some skewers, which were cheap and extremely tasty, then we went to check out some other places since it was still early.

We ended up finding a place called Zapatas, which I had gone to last year when I went on a study abroad program in China. They serve the best Mexican food that you will ever taste, or at least they did that day that I went. But at night it turns into a club. It was ok, we just drank a beer then left and found a few Chinese clubs. These other clubs sucked because there were a bunch of people smoking cigarettes inside and it just felt like you fell into a volcano... we didn't last long in those. 

We decided to go home soon after because of some weird stuff that happened that I will probably explain in another post. I ended up crashing at Neil's crib because my dorm was too far, and I slept like a baby! That was most of what happened my first week of China. I'll post more and pictures soon! Zai jian!