ni hao, it's nika on tour: Shanghai 2015

Hello Nihao!
I feel very good! Because it's holiday! The Chinese are celebrating 70 years of winning the war against the Japanese, so we have 4 free days and enjoy them to the top.

The beginning of my week was also not bad - I had my first job! A presentation for the Korean make up brand Etude, where I had to pretend being the beautiful Cinderella hahaha. It was a nice job because it lasted just 3 hours and was in the Shangri La Hotel of Shanghai.

Moreover the castings were not to far away and I don't have the feeling of having wasted my time this week at all.

Furthermore, I had my first Chinese lesson that was just amazing! It is unbelievable interesting for me how many different meanings one letter can have and how precisely one have to pronounce it, as the meaning also changes with it's intonation. The alphabet I am learning now calls pin yin. I am looking forward to my next lesson with the young girl Kayla who is just 21 and studies English and French here.

We visited the old city of Shanghai in our free time- Yuyuan. The market was very crowded and loud as they sell not only a lot of traditional food as dumplings, soups and seafood there, but also jewellery and souvenirs. The City God temple was another beautiful experience with nice smell of the candles and a lot of positive energy.

The teahouse was an interesting experience. All the workers speak different languages there, so we got a nice tea ceremony in russian and enjoyed tasting 10 different sorts of tea - for skin, for stomach, for throat, green jasmine mini, oolong milk tea, pu'er tea, and flowers which look just beautiful when they open in the hot water.

The Yuyuan Garden was the highlight for me. I felt like it is a peaceful place full of harmony and nature and old times. It was first created in the Ming dynasty and is located in the north of the old city. It was a perfect break for me to walk through the wood houses, bridges and rocks that are probably over 200 years old, before moving to the modern district of Shanghai called Pudong. We took a fairy at the Bund and paid just 3 yuan for the transportation to the other side of the city. We baught something to drink there and got flashed by the crazy height of the skyscrapers. Especially the new, not yet finished Shanghai Tower exited me. My heart even started to beat faster and I got goose bumps because it was such a strange feeling to be a small miniature person standing near to the tower and breaking the neck to look to the top of it. After trying to take pictures pressing the building into the phone as the background we walked to the Oriental Pearl Tower and waited until it turns on. It was just beautiful to look at the quickly light changing after it finally stayed as the purple one. Finally, we took the metro back to our station, picked a spicy noodle sesam soup tabao (to go) and devoured it hungry at home. Now I am happyily relaxing after that full programme. I practice the Chinese pronunciation and look forward to the next days.

The pictures will hopefully bring my adventures closer to you. I have 2 days left of holiday and hope the next week will be at least so good as that one.

Cheers!

#salmon #cheese #rice #sushi #wonderful

Off to castings

Cinderella and presenter

Let's have a beautiful ball

With this foundation you will have a skin like cinderella....

8 am in the Casting bus..to early for anything

#eseemodelmanagement..just a few of the girls in our agency

Girls at the Yuyuan Market Place

Yuyuan Teahouse

Tea ceremony at the teahouse #hearing #drinking

View from the teahouse #oldcity a bit of the newcity in background...

City God Temple

Holding a candle for some wishes

Yuyuan Garden..nature, history and harmony

I could sit and read a book hearing the calm talking of the Chinese and breathing in the fresh air and the nice smell

Architecture from hundreds of yesrs ago...

Fashion meets history and tradition

Old and new town in one picture again..

Fantastic colors. I could live here.

#gate

#hugedoor

#Dragon

Please come in to the wonderland

Fairy to the modern area...the "bottle opener" building is the World Financial Center and the highest one is the new Shanghai Tower which is not finished yet