Student Videos

Today we finished teaching winter school- 13 hour days M-F for the entire month of January! During the classes, the kids loved to hear about our personal lives, ESPECIALLY our dogs Dixie and Bailey. They also love to hear funny stories about our families. We took a couple of videos of our students that we thought our family back home might enjoy seeing.

Pop's Adventure! This video is of Tony. He's in 4th grade and was in our advanced winter school class. In this video, he's telling a funny story about Pop, Melissa's 93 year old grandfather, who escaped from Panera Bread where he was having coffee with his friends, to go to the cell phone shop. The confusion was that he chose not to go to the cell phone shop next door to Panera, but decided to walk across 8 lanes of traffic on Alafaya Tr. using his walker to go to the cell phone shop across the street!

Dixie and Bailey: The third grade beginner class during winter school was almost to the point of obsession about our dogs. They asked for a new story everyday and when asked to write an essay of their choice, some of them chose to write about Dixie and Bailey! Here's a video of a few of them saying what they like about the dogs.

Shanghai: The Cultural Side

In addition to seeing the modern side of Shanghai with it's amazing skyline, we also explored the cultural side, including Old Town, Yuyuan Garden, Fuxing Park, and the French Concession. Once again, China exceeded our expectations!!!

Old Town: This is the center of the old Chinese city, the first part of Shanghai to be settled and where foreigners rarely went during the Concession days.


It was pretty funny seeing a KFC in the middle of all the traditional Chinese shops.

Gotta love Starbucks!!!

Yuyuan Garden:Yuyuan is a 400 year old classical Chinese garden in the Old Town of Shanghai. A local official named Pan Yunduan spent twenty years and all his savings building it to please his parents in their old age. It's full of elaborate rockeries, goldfish ponds, arched bridges, and Chinese pavilions. This was one of our favorite places we visited!

Group shot: Frank, Melissa, Josephine, Ben, Marissa, Sally, Tarryn, and Eliza

Melissa, Eliza, Tarryn, Josephine, and Sally

Everyone was having a lot of fun taking different "effect" pictures...This one is known as "rock effect."

Window effect

Door effect

Frank, Eliza, Josephine, Sally, and Tarryn

As soon as I was getting ready to take this pic of Eliza and Sally, some Chinese worker came and put her bucket down right in the middle of them! haha

Eliza apparently doesn't know how to read- the sign says "Danger! The slope is slippery." ^_^ (just a joke)

Fuxing Park and the French Concession: The French Concession is an area of Shanghai that was once designated for the French. It's an area filled with small boutiques, cafes, old houses, and wide, tree-lined streets. Within the French Concession is Fuxing Park, which was formerly a private estate until 1909. This park is one of the city's most popular parks. Unfortunately we visited Shanghai in the winter when most of the flowers and trees were dead...it was still really nice and relaxing to walk around, though.

We split up from our group of 10 for part of the day...so it was us with Josephine, Christine, and Laura

A man painting Chinese characters on the sidewalk.

These were huge water tubes that kids could play in...think of a hamster running on a wheel and that's what the kids looked like!

Kids could also rent paddle boats.

Families fishing in a pond.

Groups of men were gathered around tables playing cards and chess.

A group of men playing cards in the park.

Laura and Christine in front of the rose garden.

Frank, Josephine, and Christine strolling the French Concession.
One of the beautiful European houses in the French Concession.

Papa John's written in Chinese really amused us!

Our view of China:

Our experiences in Beijing and Shanghai were so wonderful that it's made China one of our top 3 Asian countries we've visited, along with Japan and Thailand. We love how China's maintained it's culture and individuality despite communism. We feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to visit Shanghai, especially with such a fun group of friends. Now we're planning a trip to Cambodia in February for just the two of us.

Having lived in Asia for almost 3 years total, we have had the chance to visit so many countries...here's where we've been so far:

Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and soon to be Cambodia

Our dream is to backpack through Europe. We have only been to Italy, and would love to see more!

Shanghai: The LARGEST city in China!

On December 30, we went with a group of friends to Shanghai, China. After visiting Beijing last May and absolutely loving it, we weren't sure if Shanghai would be able to compare. We found both cities to be very different from each other, but both amazing! Shanghai is the biggest city in China,with a population of 19 million people, with Beijing having 17 million and New York having only 8 million. We found Shanghai to be very modern, clean, and upscale. Beijing, on the other hand, was full of culture and history.

We had decided to go to Shanghai after finding a good deal on a flight and thought it would be fun to go with a group of friends. Well, our group kept growing and we ended up with 10 people, all of who are English teachers. 8 of us flew from Korea and 2 girls who are currently living in Beijing, met us there. To our relief, everything went smoothly and everyone got along great.
Goodbye Korea...Hello China:

On our way to the airport at the bus stop in Ulsan:
Frank, Sally (Texas), Eliza (Canada), Marissa (California), Josephine (Canada), Tarryn (S. Africa), and Ben (Scotland)

On the 1 hour bus to the airport

At the airport in Busan- our direct flight only took an hour and a half!

Checking in...phew, everyone remembered their passports!

We were picked-up by a shuttle that brought us directly to our hostel, which made it very easy. The picture above was taken down the street from our hostel.

Chinese Food: Every meal we had was delicious. The first night we were there, we walked around our hostel looking for a restaurant. We found a beautiful restaurant and decided to treat ourselves as a celebration of our first night in China. So, we ordered a ton of great food and three bottles of wine. When the bill came, we had no idea what the cost would come out to...well, the total for 8 people was 680 yuan and we were all like "Wow, that's a lot!" But after the conversions, we realized it was $100!!! (only $12 a person)

After that experience, we ate at really nice restaurants during the rest of our trip because they had tables big enough for all of us and the Chinese food was the best we'd ever had!

Sally, Ben, Eliza, Josephine, Tarryn, Melissa, and Frank

4 plates of noodles, 4 plates of rice, 2 orders of duck, spring rolls, 2 chicken platters, and 2 pork platters. We actually left about a quarter of it on the table because we were all too stuffed to finish it.

Eliza

Frank discovered a chicken foot in one of the dishes!

Nanjing Road- This street is known as the number one shopping street in Shanghai. It had everything from upscale department stores to bargaining markets.

People's Square: This is Shanghai's "Central Park."

Shanghai Art Museum

An octopus kite being flown in People's Square.

Shanghai's Skyline:

The financial district- the building on the left is the Pearl Tower.

Shanghai World Financial Center building in the middle that looks like a bottle opener.

Shanghai World Financial Center is the third tallest building in the world.

The Bund:
This was the most famous street in Asia during the first half of the 20th century. It's where the foreigners who entered Shanghai after the Opium War of 1842 built their Western-style banks and trading houses. Now it's a mix of architecture building styles from Art Deco and Gothic to late Renaissance and classic European.

There was a lot of pollution and smog in the air due to all the construction in the area.

Chinese Acrobatic Show: Era

This show was one of the best things we did in Shanghai! It was very similar to Cirque Du Soleil, but even more impressive!

Shanghai Circus World where we watched the show.

The finale had 8 motorcyclists driving around that metal cage at the same time. It was unbelievable!!!
Here's a video someone took on YouTube you can watch at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYXoFGWgcMM&feature=related

5 of the motorcyclists after the show.

Club Paramount: We spent 2 nights, including New Year's Eve, at Club Paramount. This club had a great atmosphere. It's decor was full of Chinese lanterns, chandeliers, and big leather booths. The music was great and the place was packed!

Conga line

Melissa, Frank, Ben, Tarryn, and Josephine

Sally and Eliza

Nanjing Road at night:

We have pictures above of Nanjing Rd. during the day, but at night it had a completely different feel. It was full of people, neon lights and loud music.

This guy on a bike was trying to fight his way through the crowds.

Which way to go?

This little Chinese girl asked to take a picture with us. ^_^

Here's a video of Nanjing Rd.

Shanghai City Central Youth Hostel: Our hostel was really nice, which was actually more like a hotel. It was voted as the best hostel in Shanghai and is the biggest with 150 rooms. All 10 of us stayed there and divided into 5 different rooms.

Our room, which had a TV and bathroom as well...only $25 a night!

The restaurant in the hostel- every morning they had a free breakfast buffet and the rest of the day had a full menu.

Josephine and Frank relaxing in the massage chairs in the lobby.

Melissa feeling like a little kid in this big chair in the lobby.

Group shot outside the hostel on our last day: Christine, Josephine, Marissa, Laura, Sally, Frank, Melissa, Tarryn, and Eliza...Ben was still packing in his room. :)

Goodbye:

Eliza and Sally passed out on the subway on the way to the airport.

We took the Maglev to the airport, which is one of the world's fastest trains.

Us with Tarryn on the Maglev.

Josephine, Sally, and Marissa on the Maglev.

This is a picture of the outside of the Maglev we got off the internet.

The city of Shanghai was so much fun, but we explored the greener side as well. Check out our next blog soon about our experience visiting a couple of Shanghai's beautiful gardens.