Day+7+May+28


 * DAY 7: May 28** [[image:Umbrellas.JPG width="380" height="252" align="right" caption="A sea of umbrellas Friday morning"]]

May 28th (F): Visit classes Tour of Shanghai Center Overnight at home of a Chinese student

Yesterday was like an episode out of The Amazing Race. Thankfully, everyone but Mike H. were occupied following their Chinese hosts through a day of classes at the WeiYu School. As it turned out, we only got tidbits of their days, but most seemed interested by what thy experienced and were excited, if still a little apprehensive, about the weekend homestays. We did hear that at least some of them expected to visit the Expo, tour the Bund, or head out to the canal towns outside of Shanghai.

The main focus of the day for the Teachers and Mike H. involved trying to arrange passport and visa in order to travel home next Tuesday. The going was not always easy, and their were, admittedly, some dark moments when we thought we were doomed, but it looks like we made it all happen in the end. Ms. Lee stayed in the dorm Thursday night so that she and Mike and Mr. Xu Yi, our main contact at the school, could obtain a necessary report from the local police. That done, Ms. Lee and Mike took a cab to the consulate in Shanghai. The other teachers attempted a short tour of the French concession area with the intention of meeting Ms. Lee and Mike at the consulate. With an initial comedy of errors to start that process, Mike and Ms. Lee arrived at the consulate but the guards would not let Ms. Lee accompany Mike into the office. Mike discovered that he'd had visa pictures taken, but that he'd need larger passport photos for his passport. They left the office maybe five minutes before the rest of arrived. We saw that Mike had signed in, but we couldn't find him in the waiting area and no one could tell us where he might have gone. After a panicked series of phone calls, including the discovery that someone (Ms. Lee) had left messages for us at the hotel, which we could not get because we were not at the hotel, Mike and Ms. Lee returned to the office. We hustled them both in this time and managed to get quick cooperation from the consulate officials, who issued an emergency passport for Mike, a job completed in about 50 minutes. From there, Ms. Lee, Mike and Mr. Dunne headed to another area of Shanghai to arrange for Mike's visa. Events at the Exit and Entry Administration did not go smoothly. We thought we had all the necessary forms, but we were wrong. We needed an official report from the local police station confirming Mike's "temporary residence" at the WeiYu School. Back in a cab, 45 minutes back to the school. A policeman came to the school and took Mike's information, then returned to the police station to write up the form. Mike gathered his luggage, we made plans to get Mike to his homestay once our mission was accomplished, and we worried about new indications based on another call to the Exit and Entry Administration that obtaining an emergency visa generally took five business days. We made some calls, none all too successful, and prayed as we took another cab ride back into the city. This time, success. We had all the proper forms (finally—this was our third trip to this office) and we found a woman who automatically expedited the process, promising we would have the visa upon our return to the office late Monday afternoon. We think she just took pity on us based on our desperate and worn faces. A few high fives and we were back in a cab again, this time back out of the city, about an hour's ride, to Mike's homestay. In a maze of identical apartment buildings, we finally connected with the host family, dropped Mike with them, and took the rush hour trek back into Shanghai center to get to our hotel. Mission accomplished. Teachers celebrated with dinner in the hotel, and some of us followed with a visit to an interesting nearby pub/sports bar, with a Chinese rock band playing everything from A-Ha to Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga—quite an ending to an exhausting day.