Moving out

So as it turns out, Cathrines boyfriend is moving to Shanghai because of an internship, meaning she obviously wants to move in with him.  This made Iman Irene and me start thinking maybe we should move out as well, so we can live a bit closer to school. Our appartment is really great, Im really going to miss the wiew and the mall downstairs and how close it is to the subway, but we have decided to move on. If you or anyone you know is interested in living here in Shanghai 5 mins from the central loop line metro – please have a look at our add on smartshanghai.com. It really is a great appartment and it is really close to the city centre.

Company Visit Day 2: Yi Wu

The second (and last day) of our fieldtrip we took the bus from Ningbo to Yi Wu to Shanghai. It was a lot of driving, but most of the time we had a pretty good wiew, China is beautiful! In additio Katrine was nice enough to share her laptop so I watched 3 movies or so on the bus. After about 3 hours  we arrived in Yi Wu where we all had lunch (both the bachelor and the master students) together. The food was great amd we als learned that Yi Wu has grown from farmland to a city of about 1,8 million residents thanks to a huge market selling more or less everything at large quantity and low prices. Our next stop was this exact market, and it was definitely one huge market. Apparently there is about 60 000 stores inside and I have no trouble believing it after seeing the market with my own eyes. The market was so huge we actually got seperated because we dcouldnt keep track of where everyone was going. Jens and I ended up looking at jewelry, toys and various statues.The prices were really low, but we couldnt really buy anything as they just wanted to sell in big volumes.  It was still rather interesting to see  this place though.

After 1 hour at the market we started on the long trip home to Shanghai.  It was supposed to take about 4 hours, but there had been a traffic accident somewhere so we got caught up in a pretty bad traffic jam. I have heard rumours about chinese drivers not letting the ambulance and helping crew pass them in traffic, but  I hoped it was just rumours. Now I got to see for myself though – the helping crew was stuck in traffic just like the rest of us – don’t people see that letting these cars pass will eventually make the traffic jam go away?

We got back to Shanghai at arround 8.30 in the evening – me and the girls managed to hijack the very first taxi. I spendt the rest of my evening relaxing after the long drive, hehe.

Company Visit day 1: Ningbo and Nordic Industrial Park

October 26th it was time for our first company visit. About 4 hours by bus from Shanghai there is a city called Ningo. Honestly I had never heard of it untill we learned about the company visit, but it is actually a rather big and modern city with a population of 10 million. Close to Ningbo there is an industrial park designed to help nordic companies enter the Chinese market – Nordic Industrial park.  This was the main destination of our Company Visit. We were about 100 norwegians (3 buses) invading their industrial park. but they were well prepared for us. We got some nice food before listening to the Chief Marketing Officer of Nordic Industrial park and a representative from Kitron (a company founded in Norway that has moved parts of its business to the park). Nordic Industrial Park’s motto is simply:

“China is not a mystery. People do Business here every day. People like us.”

Really great line there, and it suits NIP very well as they can help out companies with HR, Legal issues, finance and IT in addition to a place to build up production facilites.  After the seminar part of our visit we went on a tour of two production facilities within the park:  Swedish Ålö and Norwegian Marine Aliminium. It was interestin to see the inside of these factories and listen to the stories of the companies as well.

In the evening we headed for central Ningbo and our hotel – Crown Plaza. I got to say I did not expect this, it was actually a pretty fancy 5 star hotel! The room was great, with supersoft beds, bathrobes and tons of free stuff like toothbrushes, manicure sets, etc. Didn’t have much time in there though as we headed out for dinner more or less right away. The dinner was just for us Bachelor students, so we were “only” 36 people there, not 100. The restaurant was pretty awesome as well, got tons of delicious food to eat and beer, whine and softdrinks all provided by our school. The head of the BI office here in Shanghai, Ole Fossgård seems like a pretty nice guy actually, did a toast with everyone and also came over to each table to check that all of us were having a good time.

The evening ended with a trip to KTV (karaoke bar). More or less everybody at least stopped by and we all got a big room together, awesome! Oh and Ningbo is a beautifull city as well, check out this picture:

Getting ready for the winter

Seems like winter is right arround the corner here in Shanghai, or at least autumn. It doesnt get very cold here, just arround 0 degrees – but because of the humidity in the air it feels as 20 minus even when its really just 0.  Isolation and heating is just not priorities here in Shanghai either, so it will probably get very cold inside. Im very happy my friend Guri gave me a winters quilt, I also got a ministove at e-mart today so that I have something in addition to the aircondition for heating.  Last night was actually pretty cold and I guess it will just get colder from now on. Hope the ministove will help, at least it looks cool ^^

Anyways I will be gone for a couple of days on a company visit to Ningbo a bit to the south of Shanghai. Going there with my classmates and the master students so we will be 60 norwegians or so – yay! 🙂

 

Orientation racing in Shanghai

Yesterday The Nordic Society and the Traveling Society of Fudan hosted an event they called Orienteering. Basicly we were divided into teams and  went from place to place in Shanghai, taking pictures in special manners while also racing to the final spot.  It was a really beautifull day, the sun was shining and I could hardly see any clouds at all. More or less like summer in Norway (on a good day). We met up by the Mao statue at Fudan and were divided into teams. We got to choose one foreign partner (as in not chinese) so obviously I chose Iman Irene.  We teamed up with 3 Chinese students: Jean, Ivan and Jing.  They all seemed very nice and Irene and I decided to become speaking partners with Jing and Jean 🙂

The first spot we had to get to was The Bund Customs Clock Tower. This was the only place I would have been able to find on my own, as it is located in the bund where I have been a few times. The task at this spot was to take a picture showing what time it was and another one with all 5 group members in front of the tower. Piece of cake, Jean just asked a guy to take a picture for us.’

Next post was Shanghai Art Museum’s Clock Towerand it was a little trickier.  We took the subway to Peoples square as thats where people told us to go when we asked and then there was actually signs telling us where to go. Here we needed another picture telling the time and also one of us spelling Bolx with body language, hehe.  We managed this one fairly easy as well.

The next stop was way harder to find, would never have been able to get there without Ivan. There is this bell down by the Huangpu river, close to the Pearl Tower, but there is a constructionsite blocing the way to it and everything so I would never have guessed we were going the right way. The task here was to find out where on the bell Fudan University was written and then take a picture of it. We also had to take a picture  of the group standing behind eachother making it look as if the person in front had extra arms -managed these tasks as well because we rock ^^ The financial district looked great in the sunshine.

The final post before going to the finishline for us was The Fire Alarm Tower at Xiaonanmen. This post took us a while to get to as the chinese students didnt even really know the way and it was quite a few stops with the subway when we finally figured it out. We did get there though,and when we found the right subway stop it didnt take us that long to find the actual post. Here the task was to pose as  if we were in the chinese army – nailed it ;P

The finishline was the Xujiahui Cathedral/St. Ignatius Cathedral. Luckily Xujiahui has its own stop, so this one wasn’t too hard to find. When we got there we met up with a lot of other groups and talked for a bit. We realised we won the whole thing, as the other groups didn’t find all of the 4 posts- and we won some candy plus pen-holders, yay 🙂

After the event we were all feeling tired and hungry – so everyone went to KFC at the mall close to the cathedral. I talked with the Chinese students and a couple of Danish and Swedish students as well. I hope I made a bunch of new friends, was a fun day anyhow. Got to see a few new places in a whole different setting than regular sightseeing.

Dinner at Banana Leaf

Last night our friends Sho and Henrik invited us to have dinner together with a bunch of other foreign students here in Shanghai. We brought some of our classmates along and headed for Banana Leaf. I really liked the food there, and we even had our own room with a huge table. Heard someone singing the birthday song a few tables away so we decided to pretend it was Yashar’s birthday – and thats when the randomness began. 4-5 chinese peple came in wit ha guitar, singing and dancing. They made everyone stand up and dance arround in a circle while singing not only the birthday song but also others, even Bad Romance with Lady Gaga – haha.  Really was the highlight of my evening, everyone laughed so hard trying to sing along and dance the way they did. Yashar was really surprised as it wasnt even his birthday 🙂 Nice to meet people and go outside for something thats not school for a change, been sick almost all week and has also had tons of homeworks. Feel better now though and its weekend 😀

Stress incoming

Warning: this post is going to contain a lot of complaining, so if you dont want to listen to it – stop reading 🙂

So I am really stressed out right now, feels as if we have a million things to do at school with quizes, handins, group work, presentations, etc. On top of everything Im starting to get sick, yesterday I had to leave school early because of feber and coughing, today I think the feber is gone, but my nose is running and my throat really hurts. I really dont have time to get sick right now as I have lessons from 9 to 5 tomorrow and then meeting one of my groups at school for the rest of the evening. Sometimes I think stress actually makes me sick, last year when I had finals I also got sick while studying for them. Thats right I have finals soon as well. The first one is november 1st and it is in a finance subject, yay 😛 Im trying to stay positive and look forward to good things, like our company visit to Ningbo and Rob coming to visit in the beginning of december and my family in the end of december, I really am very lucky – its just hard to do when my head and my throat hurts and I get frustrated because it is hard to focus on the million things I have to do 😦 Allright thanks for listening (if you made it this far),  going to study for my quiz tomorrow now

Pirates of Shanghai

Last night I went to an event called Pirates of Shanghai with some friends from school/Helens.  Irene and I met up with the others at Peoples Square because Sho thought it would be cool to take purikuri (sticker-photos) in our costumes. I love purikuri, took tons of them when I lived in Japan.  The pictures turned out pretty cool and it was great fun 🙂

After distributing the stickers we headed down to the bund for the party. The party was on a boat and the plan was to go up and down the Huangpu river, but because we were too many people it didn’t move. I get seasick easily so I didn’t really mind that too much to be honest 🙂 I had no idea, but we were actually VIPs – meaning we had our own kickass table with people getting us whatever we wanted at the bar and everything. The boat looked pretty cool with pirate decorations and people in costumes everywhere. We had a great time! 🙂

Yarrr! ^^

Tonight I am going to a party called pirates of Shanghai. It is on a boat and everyone have to dress up like pirates, think it is going to be great fun! Anyways, this is my costume.. kind of homemade and improvised, hopefully I look at least a little pirate-ish!

Back to Shanghai

We returned to Shanghai october 8th by train. Because this was Rob’s last evening in China we went to Helens. As it turned out a lot of people I know here in China was there! Kacey, Sho and Mai among others. We had a great time talking to everyone showing them our pictures from Beijing and Nanjing.  We wanted to go to Bar Rouge as well, but when we got there the line was unreal and we were pretty tired as well so we just went home. The morning after was really sad, as it was time to follow Rob to the airport. Beeing together in China these two weeks made us decide to try and be together, distance and everything. I miss him so much already, even if it haven’t been a full week since he left – but that is a part of being in a long distance relationship I guess, I will just have to focus on school and enjoying China untill we can meet again.  There is a really stressfull period full of finals and assignments coming up at school now so I guess that will force me to focus.