local celebrity

I've been in China nearly two weeks. It's weird because in some ways that's such a short amount of time, but I feel as if it was ages ago that I was running through the airport in San Francisco silently praying that I wouldn't miss my flight. Well, I made it, and so far I'm surviving.

It's been so hectic getting acclimated to the 15-hour time difference, creating a schedule for my graduate courses, and thinking of lessons for the three different classes I'm teaching, so I've barely had time to relax much less sight see. This weekend I thought I'd go crazy if I stayed on campus so Romy and I took a trip to the Bund.

The Bund is a district in Shanghai, I think. I mean, I don't really know how to describe it, I just know what it is. A lot of tourists go there and take pictures. It's basically just a wharf overlooking a bunch of cool looking buildings that line the Huangpu River. It looks like this:

Romy and I took a lot of pictures of each other with the river and city skyline in the background, since that's pretty much the only thing to do at the Bund. Some guy came up to us and asked, "Can I take picture?" and we assumed he meant take a picture of the two of us since we were unable to get any together, but I'm weary of handing off my camera to strangers so I said no and he started to laugh nervously and then apologized, when Romy realized he wanted to take a picture with me, not for me.

So I laughed and said sure. It happened once more before we left the wharf, I'm toying with the idea of charging 5RMB a photo or something, y'know, for a little "mad money". The Naked Cowboy gets away with it in New York, why can't I do the same thing in China? I could be the Naked Cowgirl of Shanghai, only not naked. And not a cowgirl.

My friend Penny who is also a blond American got asked to hold someone's baby while they took a picture of her. I'm keeping my fingers crosses someone asks me that, because that's just awesome.