Last week living in Shanghai

Where should I start? telling about my last week or about the next week? Logic says that I should start with the last week- so that's what I'll do. By the way- the word 'logic' in Chinese is pronounced 'luo ji' - guess where it came from... How typically Chinese to not have that word...

OK last week... On Wednesday I went to Chinese conversation club again, as I was standing next to the gate- I didn't feel like being there, was too tired mentally, but in the end it was one of the nicest evenings I had here... I was sitting with 3 students- all there for me- speaking Chinese to them. It was fun and we laughed a lot. After that Rob came to meet me there and we went to an Italian restaurant- that had ok food for too much money. The next evening we were invited for dinner with one of Rob's bosses from Germany, and he asked us to choose a restaurant- so this time we chose a good and not too expensive Italian place. That day we also took care of Rob's registration form (I got to go to the police station 3 times just for that). On Friday we were invited for dinner with Rob's colleagues, where he works, in a nice Chinese restaurant. On Saturday we were invited for dinner with Rob's ping pong club friends, as a goodbye party for him in a nice Chinese restaurant close to our place (they were so excited to have him in their club, the manager of the club, a young guy, even gave him a nice present). Conclusion from this dinner: drunk Chinese ppl are funny. That was last week- lots of dinners. This week Rob is having a fare well dinner party in a nice restaurant close to where he works- with everyone from work- hopefully the last big dinner in a while- I'm not used to eating so much anymore! (these Chinese dinners usually contain so much food!!!)

Yesterday we bought a flight ticket to Chengdu, in Sichuan. We're giving back the apartment on Friday evening and our flight is on Saturday. I must say that as much as I'm ready to leave China- I'm tired of moving. In the last 2 and a half years I left and entered apartments about 5 times and I'm definitely tired of it. It's mentally draining. But I have no choice, and now I must move on.

***

We watched "An Inconvenient Truth" last night, Al Gore's movie. I must say that even though I was already convinced by the environmental issue before- this movie showed me just how acute it is.
Yesterday I was reading about the 15 British solders that were kidnapped in Iran- and I thought to myself- damn it! the world is full of bullies as leaders. These leaders don't want us to care if we'll all die in a Hurricane next year, as far as they're concerned, who cares if we'll all be flooded and under water and hundreds of millions of ppl will die??? Most of the world feels that if ppl like Ahmadinejad or Bush or Olmert wanna make us believe that our lives are depended on them- so be it. Let's all fight each other. Why not really. It would be really ironic if we'll all fight and kill each other and one bright day we'll be all under water - just coz we were incapable of looking ahead just one more day. This makes me so furious!!! Especially in China- where you see how little they care about keeping the environment clean. In the big cities they're a bit better, but it's still very very bad... I think to myself- what can I, or anyone for that matter do, to show the ppl in this world that our daily problems are just daily- and if we don't wanna be the ones to kill earth with all its living creatures on it including ourselves- we better change our ways. I think about Israel- the little crazy place I'm from- and I think about all the ppl living there- what they would probably tell me is: 'I have bigger problems now! I need to support my family, and I need to protect myself from the leaders of this world who decided that I'm their little toy on a game board'. From that little spot on earth nobody can see the real danger. The danger is the bullies that make us believe there are no other dangers than the other bully. They keep our perspective very limited- they make us see things in a very narrow way- they make us not look to the sides, only look towards where they want us to look. But the danger is coming from a totally different direction. And it's time we all see it. It's time we realize that we're ruining ourselves, killing ourselves with our bare hands. We must stop blaming other ppl for trying to kill us. We're doing it ourselves.

And here's what we can do to stop global warming, even if just a bit:

Click the picture to see it bigger.
(The information is from the website linked above)

Chinese Conversation Club

I was suppose to go there alone last night, while Rob goes to play ping pong close to home. But Rob was late from work coz of all kinds of transportation issues, and in the end he offered to come to Chinese Conversation Club ( = CCC) with me. We took the subway to go there and we were looking for the place for a little while. After realizing that the little room with big glass walls inside one of the front yards is the actual place - we went in. Each of us got a Chinese person to talk to, all students, some students for teaching Chinese as a foreign language. It was so great! First of all, this way you progress in your own pace of speaking and understanding - coz it's a 1 on 1 conversation. They have special forms to fill in while talking - in which you or the Chinese partner can write down the words you didn't know while talking (It's a table with 3 columns: Pinyin, Characters and Translation). I had such a nice conversation with the Chinese guy, things I never thought I'd ever talk about with any Chinese person. Things like fate, and God and peace and war, believes and wishes, hopes and hobbies. It was very nice, and I'm definitely going back there. The shame is that it's only on Thursday nights and Sunday after noons, I wish they had this every day...

***

Went shoe shopping today. Came home empty handed... Found nothing that I really liked, and in the streets I went to today there used to be a big fake market, and since they closed it down it's almost impossible to walk there without being harassed by a person trying to sell you a watch or a bag or god knows what. It sounds a bit like this: "Lady! Lady! Watch(a) Bag(a)!!! Look(a) Look(a)!!!" Chinese ppl have a hard time finishing a word without a vowel- coz of what they're used to in Chinese, so they add an "a" to most of the words... So they follow you everywhere, some touch until I have to yell at them to stop touching me, some just block the way on the street, which makes you walk in zigzags all the way and run away into stores all the time. So, I decided to go shoe shopping again some other day in a different place...