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.

Weekend Warriors: Shanghai Library, Liuli China Museum, Tianzifang

We try to spend our weekends half of the time relaxing and half of the time exploring. Here are some of the photos we’ve collected along the way. One or two of our days off usually start at Wagas, if we get there before 10 am breakfast is half off and I love their coffee and the first photo is of one of the staff at our favorite location in Thumb Plaza.

The next few are from the Shanghai Library, it looks neat from the outside and has a beautiful lobby but a sad little collection of disorganized English books. However, they have a great selection of foreign newspapers and I parked myself and read the Asian edition of the NYT, which was really enjoyable!

You can also see the famous Laowei Street in Hongqiao. Laowei (pronounced La-ow Why) means foreigner in Mandarin so whenever I hear people say it I know they are talking about me! This street has some really good restaurants all concentrated in one area right across the way is the Hongqiao Pearl Market where Rebecca has introduced me to some awesome jewelers.

Next up are Trent’s photos from the Liuli China Museum, which is a glass museum in Shanghai that has a beautiful exterior and some really interesting pieces inside. It just so happens to be right down the road from the infamous Tianzifang art district, which is one of the only places in Shanghai with legitimately old buildings. The photos of me are in a coffee shop there and in front of a ridiculously expensive home furnishings store…check out that butterfly fabric mom, its so me right?! We also discovered a coffee shop in Tianzifang that has household cats, I want to steal this idea and open a coffee shop with cats in Pudong but Trent says not with Gus because he’s too mean. Anyway, the cats that live here are named Prince and Princess and they are ridiculously adorable. Not only do they live there but also photos of them are all over the walls and for sale as postcards out front. Finally, for all of my fellow coffee lovers and former baristi they served me a latte with decent latte art! This is a rare find in Shanghai, sadly.  Trent ordered an Irish coffee, which was neat, because they lit the sugar cube on fire! I also threw in a favorite Chinglish sign for good measure.

The last part of the post is our little Christmas tree with presents from Shanghai and the US alike. I had to get creative with the wrapping paper, in spite of the fact that China is known for excessive packaging there was a lack of wrapping paper at least in the Carrefour near our apartment. Anyway, I’m pretty sure my gramma would have been proud of my Gap bag wrapping paper. Trent got more fancy and used the decorative H&M bag which was actually cute gold polka dots and went really well with the bows he found, I was proud.

Finally, we spent Christmas day with friends, which was bittersweet. It is of course wonderful to have friends to spend time with but we were both missing our families. I think all of the expats that we spent the day with felt the same way though, so we made the best of it together. We had a wonderful lunch at Todd and Rebecca’s apartment in the French Quarter. Todd is a phenomenal chef and we had a great group together from all over the US and Europe. After lunch we went to the Nutcracker Ballet with my friend and coworker Melina at the Shanghai Grand Theater.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures during the performance, but the lobby and outside of the theater were really beautiful. They had a really neat Christmas tree made out of old show posters. The performance was beautiful and as you can see from my photos inside the theater before the show we had amazing seats! I haven’t seen the Nutcracker since I was really little and Trent and Melina had never seen it. The Shanghai Ballet did a spectacular job and I think we all really enjoyed it. It was wild to think about the fact that around the time millions of Americans were opening presents with their families I was walking around People’s Square in Shanghai, China. No matter how long we’ve been here I still have to pinch myself to remember that it is real. I guess these photos are a good reminder too! I know that someday this blog will be a great place to come back to when we are no longer living here as a reminder of the crazy, exciting and always interesting adventures we have in this city.