Time to Say 再见 !

I can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow.  These three weeks have gone by too quickly.  I checked in for my flight, and Sharron is picking me up at 9 AM to take me to the airport.  I sort of wanted to try the Maglev train that goes like 400 km per hour, but she thought it would be too much of a hassle to get my giant suitcase onto the train.  I sure hope it's not overweight, with all the presents people gave me and the bargains I got!  I am having to leave some stuff here, including my yoga mat, which I gave to Ms. Guo!  (don't worry, I have another one, this fancy pink one I got from Suzanne for my birthday)

Goobye to Ms. Guo!

Of course, everyone had to take me out for lunch.  Even the headmistress came!  We ate and ate, and I entertained them by telling them about all the rides they would soon be able to go on at Disneyland in Shanghai.  Mr. Luo is going to Washington, DC this summer to visit his daughter, who is studying at Georgetown University, so he probably won't be able to come to the global symposium.  When we said farewell, he told me to say hi to Ben and to "McGill."  I hope I will see him again - I am sure he and Ben will be hanging out together next year.  At least, I hope they will.  

For my own personal farewell to Shanghai, I decided to go up to the top of the Shanghai World Financial Center, to the observatory on the 100th floor, and look around.  I took the train up to Pudong, that brand new modern icon of capitalism, and just strolled around.  It felt really different than it had on my first tourist day - so much more familiar, like Shanghai had become "my" city, somehow.  I strolled around watching people, looking at the tourists, craning my neck to see the high skyscrapers.  There was a group of Tibetan monks visiting, too, snapping photos and just hanging out.

Monks can be tourists, too!

I took the ear-popping elevator with the monks to the 94th floor, then an escalator to the 97th, and another one to the 100th floor.  There was a glass floor in the walkway and you could see all the way down to the street.  From up there, you really see how big Shanghai is, how many people, how many high rises.  It was fun to look around and try to recognize all the places I had visited: the Bund, the Science and Technology Museum, People's Square, the old town and the Yu gardens.  I even tried to pick out DaJing High School!

On my first day as a tourist doing sightseeing, I told myself I wouldn't go up the Oriental Pearl Tower because it was too expensive and touristy, but at this point I wanted a touristy experience to celebrate the end of my time here, so I paid the extra money for the cheesy tourist photo, the one they take in front of the green screen (I already have photos like this from the Creation Museum, from Graceland, from Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, so why not the World Financial Center?)

 Woo!  there I am floating over the city in my Insane Clown Posse shirt!  I love it!  The World Financial Center is the tallest building in the photo, the one that looks like a giant beer bottle opener.  In fact, that's what they call it over here.  It was supposed to be a round hole at the top, but people said it would look too much like a giant Japanese flag floating over the city, so they changed it to a more square design.  

For my farewell dinner, Sharron took me out to a restaurant in the Mercedes Benz Arena, which was built for the expo and has amazing views over the river.  Taylor Swift just played here for three nights in a row.  All the images of "Red China" that I had from growing up in the 60s and 70s have pretty much been washed away at this point, so Taylor Swift being here was not surprising.  We ate and ate, and talked and talked, about our lives, about teaching, about politics (!) and about when we might be able to hang out together again.  "You will come back," is what everyone said to me.

If I had to sum up Shanghai, I would say it is a city of contrasts: the old Yu Garden and the sparkling skyscrapers; people pushing on the subway and yet acting shy and deferential; old people ballroom dancing in public squares and Buddhist monks chanting; haggling for cheap souvenirs and dining at the finest restaurants;  fiercely Chinese in its identity and yet global and cosmopolitan; traditional and high tech.  My advice to you:  come visit!  It's a blast!  If you are a student or teacher at Northwest and you have the opportunity to do an exchange at DaJing, come on over!  The students are shy, but if you reach out to them, they'll respond with enthusiasm.  The teachers are somewhat more subdued than our teachers at Northwest, but their hearts are no less caring for the kids they work with.  They have to contend with a huge bureaucracy and a draconian exam system, but they make the best of it.

 

What have I learned?  I think the main thing I learned is what I knew already:  I love being a teacher. I have never wanted to be anything else for as long as I can remember.  I don't care if it's from the driest textbook in the world - I will try to figure out how to make it interesting for the students by reaching out to them with affection and humor, trying to make them think creatively, asking them to speak up for themselves, and fostering loving relationships with them and with my colleagues.  I also love traveling to new places, learning about different types of people and trying to understand them. Ellen Taussig always spoke so passionately about her dream of world peace through international education, where students from schools thousands of miles apart would somehow all be reading the same text at the same time.  We got a little bit of a start on that over the past couple of months with the "Oedipus at Shanghai" project, and Sharron and I talked about how we could continue some joint projects (I'm afraid we may have to do some grammar lessons from their textbook if we want to work together, but a little grammar never hurt anyone, and NWS kids could probably use a little dose of grammar once in a while) to strengthen the connection between our two schools.  I hope we can talk more about it at the Global Symposium at Northwest in June.  Can you imagine?  Teachers from Northwest and from our five partner schools from Ethiopia, Spain, France, Taiwan and China all having a sleepover at the International House dormitory in June, after the students go home and before summer school starts?  Sitting up in our pajamas talking about crazy curriculum ideas?  I can't wait!  

I also can't wait to have a piece of whole wheat toast with peanut butter.  I love Chinese food, but it's time for a change.