The Wandering Monkey

Had lunch with my friend who is also traveling to Shanghai. We exchanged notes. He knew of a Mandarin class for adults held at a Shanghai University, right downtown. He'd been in the area before. For a 12 week program, it would cost $900 for classes plus $1100 if you wanted to stay in the dorms. This sounds like a good approach. I could judge from that what I wanted to do next. Classes only run 4 hours a day, M-F. Certainly I would learn the language this way. And I would meet many other people from all over, living the the dorms.
There is a summer session which begins July 7. That would be a tight schedule, but possible. The next one does not begin until September, which is two full months away. So I'm going to research it. One major positive part of this plan is that on a student visa you can stay up to 6 months, so long as you are taking 10 hours of classes a week. On a tourist visa you can only stay one month, then must leave and return to get another month.
The other option, teaching English, still is attractive to me, but I am concerned about committing to it. I'd like to have the option to exit China at any time without any hard feelings. I could not just leave a teaching job in the middle of the course. If I'm just a student I take off, no harm done.
In other news, I went back to the tatoo place today to see how their sketch was. I was not impressed by it, and I did not like their non-chalant attitude about it, either. So its 'no' to them. I'm still going to consider the tatoo, but we'll see when and where.

So...
Round trip open-ended airfaire to Shanghai... $760
Classes for 12 weeks.... $900
Dorm rooms ... $1100
Food ... $500
Travel & Entertainment ... $500

Opportunity of a lifetime.... well, you know.... ;-)