weekend fun in the Shanghai sun

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I often wonder if I'm just about out of stories. Just when I think I am about to go into reruns, we have a new experience, see something blog-worthy, and so for now I'm still in business. If you want to follow my other blog I'm writing for City Weekend, you can check my profile on CW and see my latest stories. Last week I wrote about the previous weekend's activities and never did make a posting on this blog...so check it out if you are interested in knowing ALL we have been up to. My profile.

I spent a lot of time last week at the kids' school. I was there Monday and Tuesday volunteering at the used book sale. English language kids books are like treasure in our house. I liked that the parents group organized this event to both help recycle books within our school community and at the same time we raised money for a charity. Thursday I went to cover a school event for City Weekend (story to appear in my CW blog this week). It was a fifth grade event called the Invention Convention and it was fantastic. The kids did a great job of coming up with a problem to solve, investigating solutions, and coming up with a prototype to demo their idea. I was introduced to several students as a reporter from a magazine. I tried not giggle each time. Friday, I got a copy of the latest City Weekend and saw my blog highlighted and a picture of Emily in the print mag. So fun. I took the magazine to school that afternoon and Emily's friends were all thrilled to see her cute face in print. I was at school Friday afternoon to see Nathan read his poetry at the school assembly. Earlier this month, Emily did a performance for the assembly and this time it was Nathan's class on stage. He did a great job.

This weekend we were very busy and spent a lot of our time outdoors. I wrote about Saturday on City Weekend and here's that blurb:

Saturday afternoon. We’d shuttled one kid to Lego class, had a fun lunch with friends and then ran our typical Saturday errands. There was still a nice chunk of the day left and we were eager to get out there and enjoy the good weather. We finally convinced both kids (at the same time) to agree that Century Park in Pudong was the perfect destination. We had only been there once before last September and the experience was marred by a huge rainstorm and Emily being hit by a bike. She was fine.

We set off by subway and made it there easily enough. The park was busy but not overly crowded and we quickly decided to rent one of the bikes for four. Two people in the front, two in the back and all can pedal. Emily’s little legs didn’t reach, so she happily agreed to be staff photographer. Nathan and Mark pedaled in the front and I was the back seat power. I was falsely accused of not pedaling several times by the front men. I pedaled.

It was a great way to see the park and we laughed and some of us sang as we made our way in and out of paths that had “no bike” signs (oops) and avoided many potential collisions with people or objects thanks to Mark’s keen steering and breaking skills. We also enjoyed a drive-up snack store where we bought Gatorade for the kids and beers for the adults. Everyone needed to stay hydrated. We were exercising!

We rented the bike for an hour and had to race back to be sure we weren’t late. We made it with twenty seconds to spare and got a final family picture before heading back home. We promised the kids we’d go back to Century Park soon—perhaps even today—to take advantage of the kids’ area and all the fun rides.

Saturday night we met Joanna, Ian and Jo's mum who is visiting from England. We went to Taikang Lu, our favorite spot, and had a great time drinking wine and eating Vietnamese. A winning combination.

Sunday was family day. Mark and Nathan played baseball and explored Zhongshan Park while Emily and I went to get her haircut. She is growing it long but it needed a trim. She loved the in chair hair wash and the haircut was a success. No tears. Hair still long. Phew.

Later, we went to a new park called Chang Feng Park, and it is huge. We all had fun exploring paths where we kept encountering couples smooching in various alcoves. Spring Fever has come to Shanghai's young lovers. The kids went on a few rides, we watched the drivers on the indoor go kart track (Nathan wanted to drive one but he's not big enough yet). We took a taxi to the park nd walked home, which was not well received by the young girl member of Team Slaven. She did it though. Forced march though it was.

When we arrived back in our 'hood we walked past the ticket booth for the movie theater in the mall near our apartment. We have not been to a movie here--have seen them all on DVD, but have yet to go into a theater and pay high ticket prices for the big screen experience. Today was the day. Spontaneous and crazy, we decided to go to a movie on Sunday evening in lieu of dinner. We had a big brunch and none of us was hungry anyway. We saw Monsters vs. Aliens in 3D. Great choice. A couple noteworthy things happened. One, when we bought our tickets, we selected our seats and our tickets had the assigned seats printed on them. The cashier showed us an electronic seating map of the theater and we chose our seats. We also had to give a RMB 100 ($15 USD) deposit per pair of 3D glasses. You can be sure we were all careful with the glasses--which were not paper junky ones with that goofy colored film but hard plastic frames with real lenses. Also interesting. The show was great and we were all amazed at the difference of the 3D experience. Of course, we had seen the movie on DVD a couple weeks ago, so we could compare. Also of note is the popcorn at the Chinese movie theater. Not salty. Sweet. It's yellow, it's served in a bucket, but it's not salty. I'm not a fan.

While waiting for the movie to start Mark started a panic among the group when he said "you know this might not be in English!" I'll leave you to imagine the exchange we had, which began with my comment of "if you didn't think it was in English, why did you say 'It's in English' earlier?"--but in the end, it was in English with Chinese subtitles.

It's Sunday night here and three out of four of us are snoring away. Monday awaits.

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Photos

hair wash, chair wash
this is followed by a rinse and second wash at a sink. don't ask.

the boyfriend/husband/purse holder
Shanghainese men are known to carry their wives purses. It's a stereotype but one we see in play quite often. Poor guy.

Comments

[Julie]

Fun!
Sounds like a great, action-packed weekend!

[ElyseandPete]

Men=Purseholders
This cracks me up each and every time I see a man carrying his lady's purse. It happens in Hangzhou a lot also.