I've Been Shanghai'd

I think I will once again use this blog. I haven't been doing it at all recently but I think it's a really cool idea especially because I'm so far from most of the people I love.
I arrived in Shanghai nine days ago. I can't believe it was that long ago and yet two weeks ago I'd never seen this city. It's incredible to me.
Shanghai. Where can I even start? If I felt lost in New York City, a place where I knew the language and the people and the customs, this is a whole other beast. I can't even fathom the magnitude of this city, the amount of people, the differences in our habits and lives. Yet at the same time I still manage to communicate with people. I still can get around in a cab. I can order food, and say thank you and hello and all the niceties I'm used to saying to the drugstore cashier. I don't feel as lost or as small as I did when I first moved to New York. Maybe that has more to do with where I am in life than the city. It probably does.
The food here is incredible, as I expected. It's also incredibly cheap. I can pay less than a dollar U.S. and get a legitimate, delicious meal in a sit-down restaurant.
It's also so strange to have classes with and be around so many non-drama majors. I do like it. I do miss my studio friends and customs. I finished class at four today, which is so early for a Monday. And I get to come home and sit and I've already finished my homework.
There are so many things to do and explore here, but I really just want a good spinach salad. The beds here are hard. But the people are beautiful and so interesting.
One of the biggest differences is the lights at night. In New York, only the biggest and tallest and most iconic of buildings are lit at night, and usually tastefully so. I cringe when the Empire State Building is anything but blue or white. Here, it is the opposite. I don't know if these lights were installed for the Expo or many years ago, but the city is constantly as bright and as colorful after the sun has gone down as it is in daylight. Neon colors are the norm. Rainbows and twinkling lights are the norm. It's a trend to light the trees green so they look incredibly vibrant and hang lit objects from the branches. I've never seen anything so tacky or so wonderful. This is a culture where the city is constantly decorated, constantly as festive as Christmastime. I can't wait for a festival here. I wonder what Chinese New Year is like. It must be insane.
This is a place filled with dichotomies and differences. The expats at the graffiti competition I went to yesterday, for example. They were speaking English and various other European languages, DSLRs in hand, smiling and chatting, while the children of the local Shanghainese ran rampant at their feet. I've met quite a number of expats, and I always want to ask them how they ended up in this place. Do they miss their homeland. Do they enthuse about the McDonalds here like we college students do. Can they stand the humid weather.
I'm in love with this city. I love the children running on the street, the boys with their shaved heads and girls with black pigtails. I love the back alleyways with fruit sold fresh out of stands and frogs and crabs still scrambling in tubs on the street. I can't even wrap my head around how the poverty and lack of sanitation I've seen is not the lowest in the country, or how it can exist only a few blocks away from a twelve story mall or a Dior store.