No Pollution?

I'm now in the 7th week meaning the end of my internship is quickly approaching. I feel like I have really settled into more of a routine here as well. After arriving in the morning, I generally check all my emails and deal with the little things. Usually, Rachel, one of the HR workers, sends me an email with some sort of work attached. Oftentimes it will have a few articles that I need to edit for the insider magazine called Wisoner. Since they send their Chinese-written articles to an outside company where no native English speakers are present, the English is often quite interesting to say the least. At least one of the workers there is nearly perfect, however, and those articles take hardly any time at all to edit but many of them are terrible. It seems that the prepositions "for" and "of" are used virtually interchangeably resulting in long awkward prepositional phrases. Despite many English errors though, these articles really let me know what's going on in Wison since the majority of the articles are about the projects or deals they are working on. Occasionally, a press release slips in so it keeps things pretty interesting there.

Around 12, I go and eat lunch almost always with other interns but occasionally we go eat with Chinese coworkers. I think that all of us interns intimidate most of the Chinese though because we are so many and probably seem awfully loud to them. After lunch, we always take a break which usually consists of grabbing coffee and sitting in the lounging areas on the first floor or looking at the art in the gallery. After that, I usually am most efficient. Sometimes I will have a meeting in the afternoon with the Corporate Culture Team to talk about upcoming events that Wison wants to hold for its workers, but most of the time I just keep working on the assignments Rachel gives me. Around 4:30, which is about the time when I get antsy to get off work, I fortunately get to help a few coworkers with English until 5:30 when we finally get off work. I find this a good way to end my day and also quite interesting. It's fun to get to know some of the people around you, and since they know I speak some Chinese, even though it's not helpful for them, they will often end up speaking to me in Chinese so I get practice in that way as well.

While work has settled into some kind of routine, the weather certainly has not. Last Friday, wind from some direction started blowing and so there is virtually no pollution at all. Despite being around 95 degrees every day, the clear blue sky and bright sun make Shanghai so much more beautiful than before. I could almost consider living here long-term if the weather were like this all the time. Last Saturday though, I got some pretty incredible pictures (for me at least) of the Pearl Tower under clear skies during the day. Although I have lived in Shanghai for around 7 months total, I had never been to the Bund area during the day. It was definitely worth it with this weather. I really hope the weather stays this way until I leave though since it just makes things better even though it's incredibly hot. It seems like everyone is happier and more energized than when it was cloudy every day and raining.

The game itself seemed incredibly short. I swear when I used to play soccer or watch games that 90 minutes seemed like an eternity but the excitement and energy at the stadium really made time fly. Even though Man U did not bring their top players and they completely dominated possession of the ball, the atmosphere in the stadium made up for any lack of exciting plays. It seemed that every single Chinese person there was cheering for Man U, except the one or two times that Shanghai was actually on the attack, they all wildly cheered for them instead. I think the only people I saw wearing Shanghai jerseys were foreigners. Anyway, the final score ended up being 1-0, with the only Asian guy on Man U scoring the goal. He happens to be Japanese as well, which due to Japan's actions during WWII in Nanjing, probably was the least liked player on the field.

All in all it's been a good week, especially because of the weather, but my time here is coming to a close quickly. I will definitely be busy trying to say goodbye to all my new friends here as well as the old ones, and also trying to fit in every good restaurant I want to eat at before I leave. At the same time though, it will be nice to be home again and relax a bit before starting school again.