Yalies invade Shanghai

Lisa:

So, I’ve only been in Shanghai for 2 days, I don’t start work until tomorrow, and already there’s so much to update.!

First off, our hotel rooms. They are actually the most ridiculous things ever. Ridiculous in a really excessively amazing way. Basically, Yale has assigned 2 people per room, but within each suite we have:

3 bedrooms, 2 queen size beds, 2 twin size beds, a dining area and table, a kitchen, 2 large bathrooms (one of which has 2 showers in it), our own laundry machine, an office, and 3 balconies overlooking a pretty awesome view of Shanghai buildings and scenery. Keep in mind again… this is all for two people. Why we have 8 extra beds between the 7 of us is completely beyond me.

[There will be a video tour to come once Madison gets in (she should be coming in within the hour!)]

I stopped by Kathleen’s 5 Restaurant and Bar to meet my boss, Franck, and introduce myself. He basically told me the tentative plan about what I’ll be working on: So in terms of marketing, the first thing I need to do is get to know the product inside and out. So for the first week or so, I’ll be acting kind of as a hostess, talking to customers, seeing what they like/don’t like so I can get a feel for what works/doesn’t work. There will be a ton of events coming up, and I’ll get to watch how they’re set up and executed. Once he thinks I’m ready, he’s going to hand me over an event- he was talking about a charity benefit bash around mid/end June- and I would get to plan out and be in charge of the entire event!!! I’ll also be helping with the newsletter, and maybe even teaching the staff English at some point. He’s also open to any other ideas I might have in terms of events or anything else. David (whose working at the Museum of Contemporary Art) and I already have grand plans to put on a joint benefit/event involving some sort of wine and cheese and catered food from Kathleen’s 5, and mixing in a small tour of the Museum. Art+Culture+Luxury food= PURE CLASS. I’m so excited for my internship to start tomorrow!!! Oh, and best of all, they feed me! Lunch and dinner provided!! Though we’ll be cooking a lot in the hotel together (!!!) but it’s great to have free food always at my disposal.

Anyway, last night, I hung out with an old family friend’s son, (we were apparently good friends back when we were ages 4 and 5 respectively). We ended up barhopping for a bit around a couple expat areas, then wound up at Hengshan Lu, home of Shanghai’s first bars back in the day. I was already dead tired by 8pm, but hey, drinks can only help jet lag right? Right.

So as a brief overview, there are 8 Yalies here on the bulldogs internship program: Me, Madison, David, Will, Adam, Andi, Sandy, and technically Jim though he isn’t officially part of the program. We had our first homemade meal together! T’was super cute. We made banana-stuffed French toast with homemade syrup (courtesy of David’s food prowess,) poached eggs, watermelon, and ramen. We’re hoping to cook a lot of meals together this trip, and also the hope is by the time I get back to America, I’ll have a whole stock of yummy food I can cook.

We had orientation today too at this crazy fancy downtown shopping/law firm place where Deanna, our “Shanghai Godmother” basically gave us an overview of Shanghai geography, and gave us a bunch of awesome free shit (gift certificates to Starbucks, McDonalds, Element Fresh, and a free ticket to the World expo). She’s also organized some really cool activities for us like a bike tour of Shanghai, free foot massage and dinner, and… a walking tour of the Shanghai Jewish history museum (yay?).

After orientation, we had a free dinner at Sichuan citizen restaurant with Shanghai Yale Alumni. Met some pretty cool alumni. Networking begins NOW. Woot! Met this one guy George who’s an alum of the Yale business school and works at a German/Chinese law firm now. He was telling me about how he wanted to organize a Bulldogs barhopping trip (YES!) So naturally, I talked him up, got his business card, so hopefully we’ll be having a Yale subsidized barhopping trip within the next couple weeks!

It’s currently almost 11 pm, and David, Will, Sandy, Andi, and I are sitting around a table, drinking Shiraz wine, eating Gouda cheese and crackers, and skyping each other. We were planning on wine and Jacuzzi night, but for some reason the Jacuzzi is quite cold…

Anyway, I don’t start work tomorrow until 10:30! I love this schedule. We’ll basically play it by week. If there are events at night, he said I can come in some days at like 2 pm, and stay till the evening, or if there are midafternoon rushes, I can come in at 10:30. Basically, almost never do I have to wake up ridiculously early, which is AWESOME.

I can’t wait to start my job! Updates on day 1 of work will come tomorrow!