first day

my first day was pretty boring. i spent most of the day going through menial orientation things. the worst part is that the vast majority of the orientation material didn't apply to me, an unpaid intern from america. i was orientated with 3 other people, all shanghainese. two are secretaries and one is an IT support guy. because we were all given the same orientation spiel, a particular section rarely applied to more than two of us.

i'm slowly discovering that the area i'm working in is incredibly expensive. i'm starting to miss all the cheap meals i had in beijing; here, i'm almost paying western prices for my meals. i've been trying to cook a little, but the little gas stove i have is irritable and often goes on strikes.

i'm starting to give up any hopes i had of understanding shanghainese. it really is radically different from pu tong hua (normal mandarin). luckily, most people i've met have been willing and able to speak mandarin with me.

random: a lot of my coworkers have things that look like little desktop humidifiers. they're just these little machines that produce steam. i'm guessing they have some kind of medical purpose, though i can't quite figure out what that'd be.