Update!

Dear Family and Friends!

As you can see ( or best - not see anything), there have not been many updates on my blog recently. The main reason for this is that I've been way too busy in Shanghai since I came back from my last Asia-Adventure this winter to write on my blog.

On the other hand, I decided that I will continue writing this "log-book" of my life, so that I can share my experiences with the world and keep a lasting memory for myself.

Therefore, I thought it might be more appropriate to continue to write in English, so that it can reach more people.


So, what happened after I came back to Shanghai?

1. Fudan Welcome MIxR

As many of you remember, I used to be part of the Fudan International Students Organization, called Fisa. We had big plans for this semester, and the first one was the Welcome Mixr, where newly arrived students had the opportunity to get to know each other and us, so that they were better integrated to their new life in Shanghai.
It was pretty successful, with about 100 participants. It was organized in a canteen style restaurant just across the street from the Fudan dorms, and we got to know heaps of new people.

Then I knew, that the new semester would be full of fun!

I was also overwhelmed by the kind welcome I received from Tanya, who made the rest of the semester even sweeter for me!

Only one week later, on March 7th ( my name day) we did the first big Fisa party at Sky Club in Shanghai, which was the biggest Fudan Party by any organization so far! 450 people came, and we really rocked that place! We had famous guest DJ-s from overseas arriving as well as a nice table, with 2 bottles of whiskey! Not too bad!

After this party, I decided that there was no room to grow any more with Fisa, so I had to find new ways to go my own way... The founding idea of SISO came to my mind, which was nothing else but the Shanghai International Students Organization... However, until we got launced, it took one more month to prepare.

FILM SHOOTING

All these activities we had with several student organizations were amazing, really making my studies at Fudan richer and great for my personal development... BUT for my WALLET???? NAAAAAAAAAAAAH, lah. Cash was-like we knew from good old Singapore times - NO QUESTION, because we did not have any :D

So: GET SOME!

There are plenty of ways to earn some cash in Shanghai if you are a foreigner. You can teach English for 150-200 RMB /hour which is really good. Not too much fun, but gooood money!

There is also another way: Be an extra in a movie! The money is OK, 500 rmb / day , but the workload is literally ZERO. Stand there, or sit there next to some nice Chinese actors and do nothing!

I was there on March 15th, and I was the only non- Russian / Ukrainian there, and that was where I got closer to our Dragonboat Heroes Pasha and Sasha displayed above!

As expected, we had to cause some trouble! We saw that CN chick sleeping on the floor with her head covered by a cloth! We had to take advantage of this ridiculous situation, so we decided to take pictures of her ... Which really did not involve any bad intentions at all, but our Chinese friends made a really big drama out of it. We got almost kicked off the set of Dong Feng Yu - a new movie by Fan Bing Bing and almost got into some trouble with the crew. Although we were not guilty by any matters. I guess this is 中国特色。。

Ok, money was in - at least a little bit - so let's celebrate!

St. Patrick's Day Party

The Irish Guys - who were later the founding members of SISO together with Chris, threw an amazing St. Patrick's Day House Party.

It was simply legendary!!!!

I guess the pics say more than a 1000 words, so I would like to let them speak! BTW, the "DICK", which is coming out of Javier's jeans, is actually a bottle opener! HAHA...

ROTARACT ELECTIONS



Time passed by, and one very sad and upsetting event shocked us in Shanghai. The apartment of the former President of Rotaract Club of Shanghai caught fire, which caused our former President to leave the city for good. This was the only logical consequence, I would have done the same.


However, we had to elect a new board in the Club, and I ran for the position of President...

It would have been a miracle to be elected for this position, because I had only visited 2-3 meetings before. But it was enough to become the Secretary, which is not a bad position either!

WOW, really lots of things happening here on the other part of the world!

The first quarter was over, so we decided to go to KOREA with Chris!

Korea Trip with Cris - SISO FOUNDATION, April 4-11

This was an awesome trip!!! We went there the two of us - Chris Kiefhaber and me! Not only had we visited one of the nicest countries I've ever seen so far, but also have I launched my first youth organization.

The first impression of Korea was that it was extremely organized. I felt a little bit like in my old home- country Germany, because of the high level of infrastructure and cleanliness. Nothing of that "Bangkok Style dingy Asia" feeling. More like some super-clean High-Tech place!

The itinerary: Seoul - Imjingak - Pusan - Seoul

Funniest story of Korea were these two Gentlemen: Mr. Kim and Mr. Lee. As soon as we touched down in Seoul, we went to a small local restaurant to kill our munchies. We were a little bit surprised by steep price increase compared to Shanghai for services like food and transportation. So we went to a side-alley to find some local food and maybe to mingle with locals. I made a grave mistake by not taking off my shoes and walking towards the bathroom. The waitress almost screamed and shouted at me, and started cleaning the floor immediately. Had we told her that we came from Shanghai, she would have probably kicked us out the place.

But coming back to our two gentlemen! They did not speak much English, so we mostly communicated with our hands and feet and used a very BASIC level of English with them!
They were so friendly to invite us for dinner on the first day we arrived - although we still wore our backpacks and came straight from the airport. After that they took us up to NSeoul Tower and paid our entrance tickets and our transportation besides being our personal tour guides! WOW, so nice that there are people this kind on this planet!

The second day we went to Changdeokgung palace, which used to be the palace of the king of Korea. There was it where we met a guy called Christian. He was traveling there for 2 weeks and just came off the plane that day. He was studying medicine in Germany and coming with us for 2 days, which was fun!

Mr. Lee invited us for lunch and took his wife with him, which was a really kind gesture indeed!
After lunch I met this girl on one of the more frequented shopping streets of Seul: As you can see, she was giving away free hugs :D Well, this would never happen in Western countries.

Coming back to Korea being a really developed country: Even the homeless were pretty well off:
And the city lights were also kinda impressive:

I could write for hours and hours about this trip, but I would focus on the most memorable parts of it!
There was of course the DMZ - demilitarized zone- trip. We went up to Imjingak and Dorasan, where the last connected train line has its southern terminus. It was really frightening, we rode past barbwire for about 5 minutes before we reached our final destination.
Fortunately the trains were pretty comfortable - KTX ones, which is the Korean version of the TGV in France.
We did not go to the JSA - joint security area - but to the tunnels which were dug by the North Koreans to infiltrate the South. Pretty scary, but the South Koreans discovered them and use them as a tourist attraction - after closing it with a 3m thick block of concrete and a 200 m long mine field and a second 1 m thick gate of concrete after it ! :D Just to make sure!

Unfortunately I was not allowed to take pics there!

After this shocking experience we went to Olympic park and to other sights of Seoul, the pics you can check on either my facebook profile or on picasa:

www.picasaweb.com/rifter222



As one of the last attractions, we went to the beautiful port city Busan, which is home to Korea's heavy industry,shipbuilding and biggest harbor. Rarely have I seen cleaner waters than here, which means that it IS possible to have advanced industry AND a green environment TOGETHER!! Chinese, pls. pay attention to this!

Best part of it was the Jagalchi fish-market!

This was our dinner:



and this!

We ate a nice grilled fish and met some friendly Japanese and Korean friends, who treated us for octopus sashimi! YUMMIEEEEEEEEEE!!


YUK, DAMN!

After this we had to "CLEAN" ourselves, and which place would be better for this than THE BEST SPA IN THE WORLD?

Well, I come from Hungary which has INDEED some of the nicest Spas in the world, BUT I was still impressed by this Spa in Busan. Unfortunately the term "SPA" is also used for Red Light District in Busan, so it took us more than 2 hours to find this particular one!

I'm tired, I've been writing this blog entry for almost 3 hours now at the airport in Istanbul while waiting for my connection flight back to Shanghai!

Enjoy reading it!!!!

All the best and peace out,

Rob