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!

Longhua Temple

Since we decided to stay in Shanghai for the holiday, I asked my colleagues where their favorite places to go in the city were, and Melina, my colleague from the Netherlands recommended the Longhua Temple. We found it one cool, breezy day with little trouble at all and I can definitely understand why she loves going there.

Longhua Temple was really beautiful, and it is one of the oldest places in Shanghai that has been preserved. It has been built and rebuilt for hundreds of years but the construction and space have really been preserved quite nicely. We accidentally snuck into the temple with a German tourist group, bad karma I know (see the photo of white people near the gate below). It was sort of an experiment because we were both taking pictures of the really tall pagoda that you also will see below, and I saw people paying for tickets and then I saw the Germans going in and I said quick Trent, I think you have to pay but lets see if they'll say anything. The guards didn't even notice, so it wasn't all that exciting but it was funny to pretend to be part of the group.

Being in the Temple was a really wonderful experience from the break in the weather, which at that point in the first week of October, was the first time we had really had relief from the humidity and the high 80s to 90 degree temperatures. The smell of the incense burning everywhere and the smoke from incense really made a lasting impression. It was such a relief to be in a relatively quiet place, and a welcome contrast to the excessive Holiday crowds literally everywhere else we went. They also had temple cats that I OF COURSE fell in love with, especially the scrawny little one with one green eye and one blue eye that came right up to me and was talking to me in between some really amusing attempts to "hunt birds."

After going to the temple we wandered around the corner and discovered the Longhua Park of Revelutionary Martyrs, according to a quick Google search:

"The park is on a site of mass execution. The Kuomintang carried out a purge of suspected Communists here in 1929 – a long, underground tunnel will lead you to the exact place where the remains of many victims were found and to the jail where prisoners were held. Less morbid, and more interesting, are the excellent, massive Soviet-realist sculptures that dot the grounds." 


Unfortunately, Trent and I didn't do this quick Google search before discovering the park, so we didn't go into the underground tunnel or the museum that is also on the grounds. It just means a return trip is in order!

Upon entering the park, I did however get in trouble. I was trying to sneak up on some men doing Tai Chi in the park to take a photograph, the particular stretch of grass I used to approach my subjects was apparently off limits. I was completely unaware until Trent called my name out to which I was going to turn around and say, "Shhh, I'll be right back" but instead was met with the sight of a small Chinese guard furiously waving his finger at me. I quickly got off the grass feeling quite embarrassed and especially guilty because I had been trying to sneak a picture. But, we didn't let that incident get in our way and wandered through the park and enjoyed the day. The park is quite beautiful, and the history behind it helps me understand the layout and the monuments a little better than I did the day we were there.