Big Black goes to Shanghai and gets the Stink eye!!!

As Jill mentioned before we went to Shanghai for four days. It was a Chinese national holiday and somewhere I heard (O'malley's Irish Pub) that there were around 480 million Chinese traveling that day. I don't know how true that was, but out of the normal 20 million people that live in Shanghai I think there might have been an extra 100 million more people. I have never nor do I ever want to travel within China on a national holiday that's why Jill and I will be planning a trip outside of China for the Chinese New Years. If anyone wants to host some moochers for the last week in January we are currently taking offers.
Now let me tell you about the Shanghai trip. First it starts out going to the bus station here in Beilun which was really small and as soon as Jill and I walked in every eye was on us. It got a little tricky trying to figure out which door to go through (keep in mind there were only two) and when they would announce something it was in mandarin, but we eventually made it on the bus. Our seat numbers were 20 and 21 here's a little hint when riding a bus in china seat 20 and 21 are not good seats to have if you are expecting to sit next to the person you are traveling with. Seat 20 is actually next to seat 19 and seat 21 is in the very back of the bus next to the window. Oh, did I mention I sat in seat 20 and the chair was broke which meant it was reclined the whole trip which took around 3 1/2 hours. It really wasn't all that bad cuz there was a lot of leg room on the bus and it was nice for sleeping with one exception. My arm rest was broke and when we would take a big turn big black would fall out of the chair.
After the bus ride we get to the Shanghai bus station we buy return trip tickets and get seats 1 and 2. Here's another hint seats 1 and 2 not that good cuz you can see the driving up close and personal not smart, but at least we sat together. Now we are at the bus station and we are looking for a cab to the hotel and we are suddenly surrounded by a group of men that either want us to take their cab or buy Jill from me so she can (give good massegee). So, like a two nimrods we haggle for a price and get in this guys cab Mistake!! as it turned out this guy wasn't even a cab driver. We get into his regular car and then we go around the corner and wait for about five minutes then his wife, 2 kids, and mother-in-law get into the car. I think what happened is this guy and his family were out shopping and he wanted some extra cash and so he would pick people up at the bus station. Oh, his car super small. Me, Jill, Mother-in-law and child in the backseat. We learned from that point on we only ride in cab's that look like cabs. We did think that something bad was going down, but we made it.
Our first evening in Shanghai we were really hungry and, so a friend recommended a bar to go to we walked and walked some more and couldn't find it we eventually stumbled on an American bar called Malone's. Mistake!! it must have been the meeting spot for old American white guys with young Chinese girlfriends. This goes out to all of my white male friends these guy were total doushes and they are a disgrace to yo' race. No offense Shane and Andy you know what I mean. We eat and we find the place our friends reccomended called the Blue Frog really cool if you are ever in Shanghai go there. We head back to our hotel for the night after I have a couple of JD's on the rocks with some Tiger beer.
Now I'm just going to start giving the short version of our trip to save time cuz this writing is getting tired.
First full day in Shanghai we go walking around we heard that there was a walking street that had shops on it so we think cool let's do it. First we have to get to the subway and get some tickets not so easy at first but we get our tickets and head to Peoples Square which was the last stop. As we pull up to the station there must have been 15 million people crowding the door. Jill looked at me and I said just follow me, thank god I'm so big and I played football cuz it came in handy that day. Cuz once we got to the walking street there must have been about 50 million people and I'm not joking I have never seen so many people in one place before in my life. More than when the MOMO mart was selling ipods for 99 cents and there were a lot of folks there! It was a full on sea of humanity the funny thing about it was the foreigners were filming the Chinese and the Chinese were filming the foreigners. At this point I started to get some stink eye and it wasn't bad stink eye it was. Hey! You Play NBA stink eye. Not really the last thing I dunked was a cookie in my coffee this morning. So, we walked for what felt like forever to get to the Bund. We get to the Bund and we figured out where the rest of the 100 million people were couldn't even get down the tunnel to get to the other side of the street. We eventually make to the other side and realize why did we come to the other side we couldn't even get a good look at anything. So, we decide to go back to the hotel so we go and sit for a while trying to figure out how to get a cab cuz the street cops are physically pulling people back onto the sidewalk. Jill and I were both thinking that neither one of us would hold up all that well in a Chinese prison so while we were sitting Jill was able to get some good shots of the Stink eye.
We make it to a cab and get back to our hotel and relax for a while. We did have some more adventure which I will tell you about later.....I just give you a tasty morsel we went to IKEA we needed new furniture...I will show you why later too...
I have one more story to share with you then I need to have a G&T and do some marking....
On our first day here Jill and I are sitting on the bus and TJ who works for the school is talking to the bus driver. If you can't figure out TJ is Chinese. So, there is a conversation going on in front of us and Jill and I keep hearing this word over and over again and we aren't sure if we are hearing it correctly. We wait a couple of days and then we ask some of the other newbies if they are hearing the same word and most of them didn't notice it. That is until we told what to listen for then everybody kept hearing this word. Everyday I would hear some of the Chinese staff talking and once again I would hear this word. They would say it like a machine gun. Then finally Dean the Middle school teacher comes over and says I know what the word is they are saying. I'm sure by now most of you are wondering what the Hell is the word! The word is nigha which sounds a lot like well, you can read. What does it mean it means "that" so, what they would say is "chiggha nigha" which means "this and that". Just the other day Jill and I went to a BBQ with some expats and some chinese. This lady was saying "that" like crazy. We started cracking up and they looked at us like we were crazy and I was thinking back home saying "that" might get you put in a hospital if your in the wrong HOOD!
I will have more about Shanghai and an American basketball team came to Beilun to play an exibition game and of course something funny happened there. I will save that for next time for now good bye.

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