Shanghai, My Dream Land

My high school years were amazing. I was popular, everybody loved me, even everybody knew me!I was an only child, spoiled, I never missed anything at home, I could get anything I wanted. I was tall, blond, tan I had light green eyes ,...I had everything that any girl desired. Wherever I went doors opened for me. I must admit that as selfi

sh as it sounds I loved that life! I felt like a princess, I was invincible and I wasn't afraid of anything. Because of that, I loved trying new things like sports or foods. For this reason is that I decided to study abroad during my senior year in high school. I wanted to try new experiences so I chose China as my destination; I must admit that I had a decent level of Chinese at the time too. Thanks to this choice is that I write this story now.

May 22^nd 2009, I landed in Shanghai at around noon. Soon after , I realized that my English was not going to be of that much help there since taxi drivers couldn´t understand my accent! That had never happened to me before! I had to start using my poor Chinese right away or I would have had to stay at the airport for all the years to come. Everything was written in Chinese characters!!I couldn't understand a thing!

Thank God that somehow I ended up making it to the school I was staying at and, to make things worse, it was nothing like I had expected!No one talked or even looked at me! I wasn´t used to that at all, I even wasn´t used to looking like the rest dressed in a crappy uniform. The rules were really strict! It felt like a dictatorship, where I couldn´t have my own say in anything!I wanted to go back, but I was too proud to ask mommy and daddy for any help.

I felt like I had no friends, like I was out of place, like if no one wanted me around at all. I started thinking that it could be my behavior that they didn´t like or, just, it could be me the one that had the problem and not them. Maybe my spoiled attitude wasn´t the correct one, maybe acting as an American in China wasn´t the correct thing, maybe, instead, I should have tried to be myself trying to adapt to the society and the culture.

Finally, and for some odd reason, the more I adapted myself into the society, the more I changed. I didn´t know how selfish I had been back at home until I went to China. Then I even had people around me that I ended up considering my friends. Something was different iabout me!The old Jane was gone!Now I was a better person, and this was the Jane I wanted to be.

Around April, my time to go back home and the reality arrived. I didn´t want to leave! I loved it in Shanghai, and I couldn´t bare to go back to the old me! I had to show everyone who I really was, start college, grow up becoming a respectful woman, and hopefully visit that dream land of mine once more, Shanghai.