A little bit of everything 什麼事都有一點

Hello again! We’ve been very busy here in Shanghai and I’m sorry I have not been able to update our friends back home sooner. The internet here has been very inconsistent the past couple days, but plan to make it up to you by giving you a much longer blog to cover the past couple days.

On Tuesday, we traveled to the business district in downtown Shanghai, where Ningbo Commerce Bank is located. Here at Ningbo’s corporate headquarters we were able to hear Linda translate a presentation by Ningbo’s branch manager. We learned about the bank’s history and corporation in general.  Also covered was information about China’s economic and financial makeup. We toured the building and also made a currency exchange before we headed back to campus.

We then attended our second basic Chinese class that afternoon. Here the students went more in depth to the Chinese language; for example conversational phrases and more writing. It seems some of the students are learning a lot in such a short amount of time.

Tuesday evening, we were invited to attend the school’s musical, I Love You, in celebration of SFU’s 60th anniversary. This musical was a comedy with only four actors, two male and two female SFU students. All were unbelievable actors and singers and had a great performance that evening. The musical was primarily in Chinese, except a few English subtitles during the songs. I have to admit, the majority of the time I wasn’t sure where the plot was headed or what was going on, but I still was able to understand the humor.

On Wednesday, the students woke up early and had a microeconomics class consisting of all international students from a variety of countries. Aimee Thrune, a senior LC math major, had an opportunity to solve a problem in front of class versus another student. The rest of the time, the students listened to a lecture-based class covering business. The students had short break between class and the game to walk to a local market. Here is where they were able to see another side of Shanghai. Many local families were purchasing their produce or meat for the day. Coach Matt tried a whole duck, which was cooked at one of the stands. All week, Matt has been one of the bravest members of our group in relation to trying local food. He is willing to try just about anything!

There were many interesting things at this market, but one of the most eye-opening experiences was the variety of living and dead animals for sale. Assistant coach Amber Peterson, witnessed for the first time, a fish killed, head chopped off and gutted. “I saw them chop its head off. I’m scarred for life.”

The team was able to play its second game at the SFU gymnasium versus the varsity squad. After a slow start, we were able to get back on pace and play Muskie basketball. There was, once again, a really good crowd and fun atmosphere for the team to play in front of. We had a lot of contribution from different players and had a good time in a friendly competition against our sister school. Freshman Kayla Clark has become a local fan favorite. Numerous fans have come up to her to ask for a picture after both games. She even had a young man buy her a Coca-Cola for after the game and asked for her email.

Immediately following the game, David Lynch helped translate while I spoke with one of the SFU players. Come to find out, she is very interested in coming to Lakeland to study and play basketball. It would be amazing to have one of these talented student-athletes join our Muskie family back in America.

Our team had a celebration dinner after the win at a local (ma and pop-type) restaurant. David believes they may have never seen foreigners as patrons, but were certainly excited to welcome us to eat there this evening. As you walked up to the front entrance, you saw the cook under a pop-up tent managing all the orders from inside. You could also see the live shrimp that quite a few tried later on. While wearing plastic gloves, we had to pull the tails off and peel the shell ourselves to eat the shrimp. The food here was a little bit more spicy, but very delicious. The entire group mentioned at the end of the night; that this was their favorite meal so far. This made our trip organizer, David, extremely pleased to hear.

After nearly six days of being in China, we had the opportunity to visit the Pudong Government today. It was very informative and the speaker did a great job keeping the audience engaged. He had excellent English and a great personality. He spoke a lot about where China was and how far it has come in the past 20 years.

After we concluded the Q&A session, the students headed back to campus for a finance class. Once again, they were in a class with the SFU exchange students.

Cynthia and Bill decided to meet up with the team after class to head to downtown Shanghai for some fun. We took the Metro Line subway to People’s Square. The Square is very similar to N.Y.C. Times Square expect Nanchang Road is much longer and essentially is a pedestrian walkway. We stopped to sing some karaoke at KTV where we had our own private party room. Most of us were able to find a favorite song to sing, but Bill was the group’s best karaoke singer by far. After our attempt at singing, we headed to dinner and shopping for the remainder of the night.

Sadly, tomorrow is our last day in Shanghai. I have grown very fond of this city and feel a little more adapted to China now after being here for about one week. We plan to spend our last night at the famous Bund downtown before heading on a 6-hour train ride to Nanchang.

I look forward to posting my next blog entry after we get settled in at Nanchang.  Please stay tuned and thank you for following the Muskies!

Best to ya,

Coach Vande