Week 1 in Shanghai

Imagine you are hurrying to work. You are wearing three layers of not nearly warm enough clothes, gripping a heavy handbag guarding your laptop, and hoping your scarf is keeping you warm whilst secretly attempting to stop you from breathing in the China pollution. You are racing your way through the trail of people also heading to the metro station, becoming accustomed to the pushing and shoving and ingraining it into your daily commute to work. Welcome to work and winter in Shanghai.

It has been exactly one week since I flew in still wearing summer clothes with my overpacked suitcase. Being Chinese myself, no one batted a second eye as I grabbed my suitcase and walked out of the airport, into unknown territory. The Mandarin spoken around me was simply noise in my ear – I was as foreign as any Australian who had never been to Shanghai before. An uber ride later with my third cousin whom mum had introduced to me the week before, I was standing in the lobby of a hotel which I had no clue where and handing over my passport to check in for the next two months.

A week has gone by now. I can now hold a simple conversation in Mandarin. I have tried over ten different food places. I know the metro system almost off by heart. I have been to the other side of the river and successfully bar crawled with a friend from Australia. Ricky’s after work has become a nightly thing (Ricky’s is the sports bar literally opposite our hotel – this clearly has pros and cons.) In saying all this, I still have yet to figure out the sim card in my phone and maybe learn the bus system. But it is alright, I have seven more weeks to do that. Imagine what I will learn by the end of two months if this has only been one week.

Tomorrow is day four at work. I have been fortunate enough to be paired with a marketing company that drives my passion and genuinely lets me add value to its goals. Yes, the commute to work almost takes me an hour and a half, but no, it does not bother me and the day goes quickly because I am doing something I enjoy. The three days at work so far, I have been assigned different tasks each day and have tried a different place for lunch each time. It is safe to say, I enjoy work!

But as usual, the daily work routine goes something like this – wake up, get ready, leave, travel, check in with my supervisor, work and then head on home. But do not be fooled. Underlying this somewhat repetitive process, every day I am seeing new things, experiencing new sensations, getting lost in unknown streets (both actually and metaphorically), and finding out more intricate details not known before about the other interns in the program.

The camaraderie amongst the fifteen of us is certainly special – it is perhaps the most exciting and rewarding experience of the program. We are all so different yet so similar when speaking of career aspirations and ambitions. We are all passionate, strong-minded and intelligent people, where our desire to be more than the best we can and our willingness to tackle head-on, the challenges Shanghai presents to us, will no doubt make this entire experience unforgettable and truly extraordinary.

Bring on the next seven weeks!

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