keeping my skills sharp and having fun doing it

---

Due to my current location, I am going to use some codes here, so bear with me. The SF (rhymes with twine glue) hysteria meter is wavering above the halfway to Nutsville here in Shanghai as it seems to be throughout the world. Or maybe it’s just the Suzanne hysteria meter. Lots of hand washing, lots of me screaming "don't touch that" and "keep your hands off your face!" but so far, things are okay. The school is doing temperature checks and we do know several families who have had SF and recovered fine. You may think me crazy, but I am not taking any chances and so I am using coded messages to share the latest info from China. I know I sound paranoid, but I was talking to my dad the other day via Skype and every time (happened 3 times) he said something slightly critical of the hmmmn….mom you missed the party (another code…good luck) our connection went dead! Please no witty comments regarding my current host country. I have maintained my blog for over a year and let’s all work together and help ensure I make it the entire two year stay.

Drama and intrigue aside, we are fine here. I think I’m getting a cold (which sucks and is either because I live in a city with a gazillion people, the weather turned cold suddenly and there’s lots of rain and I take a lot of public transportation) OR it’s the fault of the woman who sat next to me at an assembly who was obviously ill. I know you know who I blame. I am writing this during my 2am wake up to drink water, eat chewable vitamin C (yum, like candy) and guzzle the goopy, bubbly delight that is Airborne with room temp water. Oh and I am also drinking hot water, because I read it is a good way to kill germs but in reality I think the germs are in me and are beyond the prevention stage. Still, it’s warm.

On to the updates.
I have been really busy the last couple of weeks and thus the frequency of my blogs has suffered. I keep thinking the blog has served its purpose but I also wanted to record the entire journey so I will try to keep going.

Okay this time for real. On to the updates.

Last weekend we were having one of those Sundays. Lots of grumbling and grumping, and it was a beautiful day out. So we finally rallied the troops and went to the mall to buy Subway sandwiches. That's right. Subs. And we went to the park, perched ourselves on some rocks (benches were all in use) and enjoyed our sort of picnic. The kids entertained us with the Kung Fu moves and we noticed they were also entertaining many other park dwellers. At one point, the kids went to see the photos another woman was taking of them during the performance.

I went to the school almost daily last week for various things. Monday, we had Emily’s school conference. She was so impressive with her student led conference. She stood at the front board and showed us all the morning routine activities like calendaring and counting drills the student in charge walks the class through. She used a pointer to take us through the various lessons and I think that was her favorite part.
On Thursday, Emily's class did a show about community workers. She memorized her lines and did a great job explaining what a teacher does. They sang, they had moves, it was adorable.

I’m also doing all sorts of work with the Girl Scouts. Apparently, I said yes again and I am now the PR Director for Shanghai Girl Scouts. I think I’ve shared before that I have a hard time saying no. Plus, it will be fun and good for me to take on some of these tasks that resemble the real (paying) job I need to find when we return home this summer. Along those lines, I wrote what I consider to be a fabulous poem for the Mother Daughter tea I am helping organize for early December. It’s going to be a great event. A real, sit-down, English tea with scones and finger sandwiches. Might be as many as 150 people there so this will likely also make its way onto my resume under the event planning category.

I am finishing up an article on do it yourself gifts kids can make for the holidays. I went out and interviewed various studio owners and it’s been really fun. I spent an hour talking with a woman who owns a stuffed animal making store (Build a bear concept) and I gave her some insight into the western customer base and she gave me insight into the Chinese customer base. Very different. Chinese kids tend to study more than western kids. They have hours and hours of homework each night. The majority of Chinese kids would prefer to spend the little free time they have playinig computer games rather than playing with stuffed animals.

I also went to a studio with the kids on Sunday where they painted pottery. It was a really nice studio. Clean, warm, well lit and they had all sorts of tools for making the creative process a bit easier on younger kids. For example they had stencils to help kids decorate the ceramic pieces with hearts, stars, foot prints, you imagine it, they have it.

Today I went to another studio and this time I did the project for research purposes. It was fun. I painted a mug and saucer at a place in a very cool art district called Moganshan Road. It’s all these loft style artists studios scattered around a compound of buildings. I want to go back and further explore on a non-rainy day.

We have friends visiting from Sweden this week. Lisa and Rikard. So nice to have visitors! I met Lisa last year and we’ve been friends ever since. She was in Shanghai studying Mandarin for 6 weeks last fall and she and her boyfriend, Rikard arrived Saturday. They brought us so many treats, which included homemade bread. We are having lots fun cooking a lot of food, drinking our reserves of wine and touring the city in the rain. It started raining today and it seems it may never stop. We are heading to the mountains on Friday and we just heard that it snowed there today. We don’t have much snow gear in Shanghai since it was not a snowy winter last year. I am looking forward to getting out of the city and breathing some fresher mountain air.

Tonight we made a huge batch of delicious dumplings, totally from scratch. Including the dough. They were so good and so fresh tasting, we had no leftovers. Mark arrived (yes, he’s back in Shanghai with us during the weeks for the time being) just as we put the dumplings on the table. Good timing.
We are counting down the days until our return to the US and all of our friends and family. But we are also still enjoying Shanghai, China and our urban adventure, year two.

---

Photos

Little Rikard
Actually the sculpture was huge. Rikard is taller than me :)

Comments

[Linda]

Keep blogging
Hey Suzanne, what do you mean "the blog has served its purpose"? I love reading your take on ex-pat life in Shanghai.

[soooze]

thanks Linda (#1 fan)
Thanks for all your comments and continued interest.