Our first official visitor!

All the way back in December we had our very first house guest all the way from, well, Hong Kong, but Hong Kong via the US/India/all over! My dear friend Meg came and stayed with us for almost two whole weeks and in spite of having to work most of the time we had some amazing adventures. Somehow, having Meg around always brings me some good luck. In this instance I got the call for a job interview while she was here, that ended up in me switching from teaching which I was struggling with to working in marketing and communications at an international school which I am really enjoying! We decided to give ourselves a local makeover by sporting glasses without lenses and super adorable face masks with bunnies on them. As you will see in the photo below, we look great and it is an obvious improvement.

We traveled all around Shanghai, heading to the pearl market, the fake market, the Hotel Thing Confluence, and the bird and flower market. We also had a pretty much failed attempt at heading to a crane sanctuary in Changshu, which is North of Shanghai. We had discussed heading away for a day trip and since I am still relatively new to China and speak basically no Chinese, I wasn't really sure how to go about planning such a trip. So I turned to one of the many expat magazines whose cover story for that week was 7 Best Day Trips out of Shanghai. Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. NEVER trust one of these magazines for day trip advice. I'll liberally quote the author as saying something to the effect of "Just head to the South Railway Station, buy a ticket, hop on the bus and in less than 90 minutes you'll arrive in Changshu. Grab a cab out to the sanctuary enjoy pine tree forests shooting out of the water while being paddled around in a Chinese gondola. When you're finished grab a cab or pedicab back to the bus station and head back to Shanghai." Wow! It's just that easy?? No. Way.

We should have taken our first clue that this was not meant to be when we were on Line 3 and watched a small child repeatedly refuse a cookie from her mother and then hop off of the seat and squat down to poop in the middle of the train floor. I will take multiple transfers as a result just to avoid said Line 3 after that incident.

Then when we arrived in Changshu, over two hours later on a bus where another small child needed to go to the bathroom. This time, her mother provided her with a bucket to use in the rear of the bus. That didn't seem to resolve the problem as she proceeded to whine-cry the remaining 45 minutes of the bus ride. Catching a cab was no problem, but due to the length of the bus ride we were running behind schedule and discovered that there were no cabs or pedicabs just hanging around the sanctuary waiting to bring us back to the bus station. We didn't get to see the cranes or the chinese gondolas because the next 30+ minutes were spent trying to get the employees of the sanctuary to call a cab for us. They refused and put us on a local bus back to the center of town, where we proceeded to stand around waiting for our return bus to Shanghai which then took almost 3 hours. Trent was kind enough to later point out, that we should not have left from the South Long Distance Bus Station since we were in fact heading North. In retrospect, the experience is quite funny and a story that my mom has since relayed to many people who then request I tell it in person which I oblige. Since this failed attempt at a day trip I have successfully visited two other cities via car and train, with friends that I happily entrusted to plan entirely. And tomorrow we're heading to Hangzhou which I am really looking forward to!

Meg will hopefully be visiting again soon as it looks like her plans will bring her back to Hong Kong in the fall. I may also get to host her lovely parents in the fall during a trip to China that they are in the process of planning. Trent and I also hope to get over to HK and go surfing with Meg and Tom and the rest of the crew they work with.