Here I am!

Hello faithful audience, if you still exist! I'm still here, and by here I mean Shanghai :) In the span since I've last posted I have lots of exciting things to share with you. Here they are in some semblance of order:

-May Holiday we took two day trips outside of Shanghai, to Suzhou and Hangzhou...we toured a silk factory, rode in a boat, saw some beautiful and some REALLY busy gardens and climbed up to see Tiger Hill Temple in Suzhou. In Hangzhou we got to see terrain that included mountains and a lot of greenery for the first time ever in China. Photos of Hangzhou to come in the next post.

-June I was offered and accepted a promotion, which has kept me plenty busy since then!

-June/July Trent and I got to head back to the US to visit our families, we spent one week with his and then he headed back to China. I went on to spend another week with mine. It was way too short but so much fun anyway. When we got back to China we tried not to spontaneously combust or melt into a puddle it was literally that hot here.

-In July we moved from Pudong (East of the river) to Puxi (West of the river) we are almost in the Former French Concession in an area of Shanghai known as the Luwan District. It is a lot of fun living in Puxi compared to Pudong. We are much closer to a lot more of our friends and going out in the evenings or on the weekends is not nearly as much of a time commitment as it was before! Our new apartment is also much larger than our old one, which if you tell that to someone who has lived in Shanghai or currently does they are quite surprised because Pudong is considerably less developed than Puxi which usually translates to larger apartments. Gus is loving our new apartment because it has huge windows and tons of sunlight.

-In August, school really started rolling again and I got to work on a new ad campaign which has been really fun and exciting.

-September, I went back to Suzhou and helped my friend Lucie pick out a dress for her upcoming wedding in December. It was a miserably hot day and we traipsed around hundreds of wedding dress shops that were mostly full of dresses sized for Asian women and decked out with sequins, taffeta, silk, lace, glitter you name it. As many possible tacky details were added to seemingly all of the dresses. Somehow, amidst all of the hideousness we managed to find a gorgeous, simple satin gown that fit her off the rack (!) for, are you sitting down readers?, RMB800 or $125. It is one of a kind and I can't wait to see the photos from her December wedding in the UK, I only wish I could be there with her!

-October, I worked literally every single weekend in the month of October. We had PTA organized carnivals and fairs on each campus to attend, and academic fairs to attend, and all kinds of events! It reminded me of my days working at recruiting fairs for the Women's and Gender Studies Department at EMU.

-November, I went on a field trip with our fifth grade students to Jinshan, home of the Peasant Painting Village. First of all, any time I get to hang out with 100 fifth graders is a good day, but to hang out with them in a neat village whose sole purpose is to provide a place artists to work and sell their paintings makes it even better. I have also put my hand sewing away for a while and picked up my oven mitts. Baking has been seriously therapeutic for me this year. I have tried my hand and mostly been successful at baking a variety of bagels including plain, cinnamon raisin, and most recently my favorite cranberry orange! I also have been seriously loving the Smitten Kitchen blog, which has been an inspiration and a great resource for delicious pancakes and various desserts. I am also now the extremely fortunate owner of her ccok book, thanks Heather! Baking in China has some extra challenges which equal a greater payoff, those challenges being the task of hunting down ingredients or asking friends and family to schlep very specific ingredients back with them (steel cut oats, haven't baked with them yet, but I will!). The added payoff is sharing with friends/colleagues and they are always so grateful because in spite of the seemingly endless bake sales hosted by high schoolers at lunch time, we all miss American style baked goods.

-Meg Fenton came to visit for a long weekend, and after that I had an AWESOME trip home to the States in December for two whole weeks!

-We took a trip to Harbin at the beginning of January, located in northern China it is famous for it's amazing ice sculptures and bitter cold temperatures. The snow and ice sculptures were really beautiful t was amazing and beautiful in spite of the food poisoning I got courtesy of Pudong airport food...yuck! Photos of this trip are two posts away!

And here we are caught up to speed and it's almost February, and you know I always save the best for last! In February Trent and I are traveling to Kota Kina Balu, Borneo (!!!!!) for Chinese New Year, then in April my parents are coming to visit for two weeks! Needless to say my second year in China is shaping up to be much more exciting, fulfilling and well rounded than most of my first year. Reading this last paragraph makes me want to do a happy dance, so I think I will!

Spring!

Spring in Shanghai is easily my favorite season, and I've almost been here long enough to have experienced all four. These are just some photos from around Shanghai. I loved the two weeks when all of the Magnolia trees were in bloom. My friend Lucie says it's even better in Beijing, I'll have to get up there next year in the Spring. I've noticed a trend as I go back through all of my photos, we have a few places that we frequent in our free time: Taikang Lu, the bird and flower market, and the fabric market. We have been branching out more lately but this Spring had a pretty predictable routine! Anyway, we went to Taikang Lu and some other places with Lucie, Dorian, Kathy and Chris. While we were waiting at Starbucks we noticed a handsome man in a ridiculous vest to help him carry around all of his super important, expensive, professional camera gear. I'm not sure who it was that suggested that Dorian go and inquire about said vest, probably me, but Dorian did. Much to our amusement the avid photographer was very pleased to discuss his vest, which it turned out was a fishing vest hence the fishing gesture he is making while Dorian considers trying the vest on. So very entertaining, as always, when Dorian and Lucie are around! We did branch out another weekend, and took the ferry across the river. It's pretty awesome to be out on the HuangPu with all of the barges and ships, it is also cool because you can use your metro card to pay the 2 kuai to get across. My photos are not flat due to lack of contrast, that is the beautiful Shanghai haze that hangs in the air most days. You can see on the skyline the building going up next to the can opener, it is going to be the tallest building in Shanghai, Asia, and I think the world upon completion. Architect gurus feel free to correct me if you know. You can also see from the close up of the construction, it is going to have this really cool spiral around look to it when it is finished. I'm not sure if we'll still be here, I think it is supposed to be done in 2014. I am also in love with these white flowering trees that bloom in April. They blooms have that trumpet shape and the trees are huge! If any botanists, master gardeners or tree enthusiasts know the name I would love to learn more about them.