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.

N Tangfang Road near Lujiabang Road

Trent and I have been going to the South Bund Soft Spun Fabric Market pretty much once a week since I got here to have clothes custom made. It has been really fun, the haggling can get old really quickly so we try to visit the same tailors, set our prices and build a relationship so the haggling is kept to a minimum. I have been looking for places to buy fabric for crafting and read online that the neighborhood surrounding the market sometimes sells fabric. We have also been on the hunt for a commuter bike for me to ride from our apartment to the train station on Middle Yanggao Road. So we asked the people at our favorite stall, Jackson's and they told us about a Giant bike shop in the area so we wandered through with a map on a sticky note in Chinese and somehow managed to find the shop. Unfortunately, since I'm a good 6 inches taller than the average Chinese person, there was literally one bike that fit me but they wouldn't deliver it for a reasonable price and we just aren't willing to splurge on a brand new bike that will sit in the elements and stands a good chance of being stolen. The neighborhood was really neat though, and as we were walking along a guard pointed out the post office that you see photos of and there was a sign saying something about it being one of the original post offices in Shanghai, we didn't really pay too close attention but it was neat to see! Along with all of the other little home improvement shops in the back alleys behind the market. Its nice to just wander sometimes and see where we end up, it is definitely more enjoyable when the entire country is not on holiday, more recently some of the crowds we've been experiencing have been so completely overwhelming. We're learning where to go and not to go though sometimes we just have to learn it the hard way!

Street scenes, the Subway and Blooming Tea

A large part of my time here is spent in transit, either on foot, in a cab or on the subway. This post is dedicated to the things I’ve seen along the way. I think I’ve already mentioned that my feet will never be the same due to the amount of walking I’ve been doing, seriously like over 10 blisters within the first few days but I got some sweet new tennies and now Iook like a real resident of the US with my shiny New Balance’s and dress clothes en route to work.

The subway has been very entertaining for a number of reasons; many of you know and love me for my shamelessness and this is one of the few things that I feel I have very much in common with Chinese people. They are completely shameless, which makes people watching better than ever. My most recent subway saga involved walking through the Guilin Lu station and having the girl in front of me stop dead in her tracks. Naturally, this caught my attention and I followed her gaze to a tiny little brown mouse scurrying along with the rest of us apparently headed for the number 9 to Middle Yanggao Road. Well, a girl who was probably 18 or older also noticed the mouse and began furiously chasing it until it slipped back up into the wall. The animal excitement didn’t end there; I need to preface the next part of the story with this little caveat. Security is pretty serious on the subways you have to walk through a metal detector and if you make eye contact with the guards you have to put your bag through an x-ray machine before you can scan your transit card; there is a long list in Chinese (and pictures for the rest of us) of all of the items and behaviors prohibited on the subway among them no smoking, no spitting and no animals. Well imagine my surprise, in the same day as the mouse incident, as I exited the train at Middle Yanggao (the end of line 9 I might add) when a man walked off with a pigeon in a cage. Yes. A pigeon. It was a perfect subway day.

The other experiences that stand out are the adorable 5-year-old named Kevin who, prompted by his parents, talked to me one night on my way home. He told me his name, his baby sister’s name- Mia, and tried to feed me potato chips in between blowing me kisses. It was quite a spectacle for the full subway car needless to say. Then there was the day that a guy my age sat down next to me and asked in perfect English if I spoke Chinese. This was fairly startling, but I was thrilled to speak with someone in English since it was only my second or third day commuting. He told me I was very beautiful and asked if he could have my number because he was a photographer and wanted to take my picture. I burst out laughing and said well no, and he seemed surprised so I explained that I didn’t know who he was and I wasn’t just handing out my number. He ended up telling me about the art school he went to in China and that he works for an ad agency and offered to show me some of his work on his tablet. He is a good photographer and I shared my blogs with him, he gave me his number and told me to think about modeling for him and to call. He also offered to teach me Chinese, which I would seriously consider. Needless to say, I haven’t called him yet but if I do I will definitely update here.

Here are some photos from our adventures around town and the subway. Notice the Hotel Thing Confluence, that’s where we go to get all kinds of random kitchen and household accessories. Its literally a market that sells anything from dishes to cleaning supplies to furnish hotels or locals such as ourselves, they also have tailors making uniforms for the multitude of service industry jobs. There are a couple of photos of a restaurant in Pudong called East West that has house cats, which I of course LOVED! Trent forbade me from petting them on the grounds that the last time I was there they circled and attacked a dog. Hard to believe when you see them grooming one another, sigh, needless to say I heeded his advice. Although the calico came right up to me and wanted some loving, I resisted and just documented them thinking all the while of my little Gus back in the mitten. I really do miss the little beast and can’t wait to bring him here in January. Even though, his caregivers have renamed him the bully I still miss him.

The sidewalk scenes are my route to work on the Pudong side, with a detail of these whimsical pink flowers that fall out of the trees and litter the sidewalk which I love and I also walk past the Chia Thai Life Style everyday which is a shopping mall connected to Lotus, my preferred grocery store so far. The only issue is for some reason I always want to call it Locust, which amuses Trent and so now I say it on purpose of course. Last but not least, Jasmine tea that blooms when you drop it into your hot water. We saw this on a documentary about Shanghai that we got from the library back in Milwaukee, and I’ve been dying to try it. Its delicious and beautiful, I’m hooked.