feeling better, stories from the week

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What a difference a week makes! I am feeling way better and far less grumpy than last I wrote. Just a few highlights from my week:

Nathan was home Monday and Tuesday with a cold but he's back in the school game now and seems to be doing fine. Emily is doing fine too. Her biggest issue at the moment is not liking any of the school food. So, we are packing her lunch each day. I'm a bit annoyed that she refuses to eat the school lunch, but I will go there soon and investigate it myself. I took a survey of some mom friends and their kids are also not eating the food. I'm annoyed because I'm lazy and I enjoy not packing lunches with private school and included lunches. But I do want Emily to eat. So we make her lunch together each night. The good news is she is asking for really healthy things. Today she took a cheese sandwich cut into triangles, carrots and sliced plum. That's my girl!

I am still contemplating buying a bike. Something I said I would never do in Shanghai just a year ago. But it would be so nice to have another means of transportation and I think I’d really see more of the city that way. I also start language class next week and I would like to bike there instead of take the subway. Walking is another option, but it’s about an hour walk and my mornings are not that speedy. If I get a bike, I will wear a helmet. I don’t care how much I will stand out. That’s sorta what I do here—stand out.
I am helping with the parents’ group welcome meeting for new families at our school. I sought out the organizers and volunteered because that event meant so much to me last year. I am gathering materials for the welcome bags and now have boxes of magazines and brochures stacked throughout the apartment. I realized that I should be sending the stuff to the organizer’s house too late in my process, but she has kindly agreed to come by and get what I’ve collected here.

I went on an adventure yesterday to buy sports stuff for the kids. Mark and Nathan are going to start soccer this weekend and Emily starts tennis next week. I went to this sporting goods store, Decathlon, that has many outlets in Shanghai. It’s huge. They have everything sports related and also clothes and shoes. The best part, no bargaining and I think the prices are reasonable. While shopping for some shoes for Nathan, I asked a boy about his age to help me choose some tennis shoes. He rolled his eyes at me but I guess he understood my questions because he picked the shoes I bought Nathan. Chinese ten year olds roll their eyes just like American ten year olds.

The real adventure of course came from finding the store. I had the location and store website map printed out. It was this tiny map but it had the store name in Chinese and I knew this place would be known by people on the street. I took the subway to the right stop and then asked a station attendant for the exit number. I wish stores would put that info on their websites, but it’s very uncommon. Often subway stops have over 10 exits. If you go out the wrong side, it can take forever to recover, at least for me. So I asked for the exit number, which got me outside. Then I exited to a throng of motorcycle drivers vying for my business. While it would have made the trip quicker, I said no. My plan was to walk and get the exercise, and also the negotiations and haggling get old sometimes. I asked a nice woman if she knew which way to go showing her my map. She answered in English and pointed me off to the left and said to go right at the next light. Check. Then I followed the map (sort of) not totally sure of the orientation of the map, but I had my compass and I found another street on the route after some walking. I went into a random shop, walked past a woman snoring on the ground (something that might have previously caused alarm, but now seemed totally fine) and showed my tiny map to the shopkeeper. He pointed me back down the road (of course opposite to my first guess) and then I was golden. I found the store further down the road. It’s a big store.

The weather was super hot and humid as usual and I envied the men on the streets with their neck towels and washcloths and wished I had a towel for the sweat pouring out of my every pore. I need to carry one next time. I stopped for water twice. The beauty of these min marts all over town is that you can get a bottle of water for about twenty cents and also get an air conditioned break. At one of my water stops, I was digging for change and pulled out a Thai coin. I made a joke in Chinese about how it was the wrong country…the woman laughed and said she only had money from one country, not many, like I did. We had a nice chat and then I was off again into the heat.

I had a pretty heavy bag on the way back but I forced myself to take the subway home to both get the exercise and prove to myself I could find my way back without any help. Done and done.

Mark has been out of town most of the week and won’t be back til Friday. We miss him a lot. He and I are going out on Saturday night to celebrate our 14th anniversary. It’s actually our 20th “since we met” anniversary. Half our lives have been spent together. Crazy stuff. Our real anniversary, Sept 3 will be spent at a back to school night next week.

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Photos

medicine vending machine
in subway station. so curious about what is dispensed!

ad for KFC
nothing like the ads for KFC back home!

emily skypes with her daddy
at least we can do video skype when Mark is away from home.

Comments

[Linda]

She's back!
Love your story about finding the store...water stops, direction inquiries and all. Making jokes in Chinese? Nice.