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Thursday, May 29th. Today we talked to the family via Skype. It was great to talk to everyone, but we are getting more and more homesick and can't wait to see the kids in a few days! This adventure will be so much better when the full cast of characters is in Shanghai. More and more, I am certain the kids will have an amazing time here. It's such a vibrant city. There are a lot of comforts from home, but we will also learn so much about a new culture.
We were out looking at apartments (together this time) with a new realtor named Vi'an. We had assumed this was a female name. Oops. Not so much. Vi'an showed us less apartments than we saw yesterday, but they were almost entirely superior to those we saw Wednesday. We ended Wednesday with 1 possible "nice" place in our budget. Now we have a list of nice places and we are narrowing in on areas. The best place we saw today was literally next door to the school we think the kids will attend. If we lived there, I could see inside the school gym from our living room! The place
is super nice, brand new everything, but the bedroom setup is not perfect. More importantly, it's not near the Metro, and after we tested the commute Mark would have if he tried to take the train, we concluded it would be over an hour with a lot of walking, 2 trains, and more walking. I don't think that's viable...he's saying maybe it is. Most likely, Mark can take cabs to and from work. His concern is on rainy days, it may be hard to get a cab. I think I mentioned previously that cabs are really cheap here--$3 to most places and no tips. So there was another nice apartment near a train station and a HUGE shopping center with grocery store and more. It seemed like a good area and would be about halfway between Mark's work and the kid's school. Tomorrow is the last search day and then we have to make a decision. We are seeing both realtors back to back. We told them we were seeing other people, but I still felt like a cheater. Mark keeps reminding me they are in this for the big bonus and nothing more. We, however, are going to be
another bldg's playground
reminded us of the ship at school!living in the apartment for a year or more. We need to worry about that more than anything else.
We saw quite a range of places. There was one place that was the same price, but giant. The place was bigger than our house! It was just too far away to be a practical choice. Nothing to walk to, everyone there had cars. It was really nice, though. Same rules apply, you can get more for your money if you are willing to live further from the city. In this case, we just aren't willing or able to do that. We want to have an urban adventure. We've been having the suburban adventure already back home.
After apartment shopping, we got dropped off at the same food court we went to yesterday. That place was so good, we had to go back. This time we did a loop and got to see all the options. SO MANY. We settled on some dim sum and it was great. I ordered all the food by pointing which worked very well. I went back to ask for napkins and used my fabulous sign language skill (miming wiping my mouth--quite effective). People
the far away place...
this was the HUGE place. check out that kitchen! don't expect us to speak Chinese, but they also don't speak English. We just figure it out together. They want to make the sale, and we want to eat the fabulous food. Win-win.
After lunch we walked around the Carrefour--a huge grocery store/megastore. They have everything from pets on the top floor (bunnies, goldfish, etc.) to luggage, and every food/beverage you can imagine. They even have a pretty extensive international wine section. Side note: Mark was doing his French accent and reading labels when a French speaking salesperson came over and started to talk to him in French. Funny! They seemed to have every kind of food in the world. Tons of great, fresh produce and all sorts of treats. There's a French bakery in the complex, which according to Mark is Paris worthy. I trust him. He knows his croissants! We took pictures at the grocery store and also tried to capture the mood with video. I think people were wondering what we were up to. We were trying to be covert, but really, I think we looked very strange with the camera low down and us trying to pan! Crazy Americans...that's us!
I have to share that
I went to the bathroom before lunch and found myself faced with my first squat toilet. I saw other women preparing to go into the stalls by rolling up their pants, so I wasn't totally shocked. I also had heard that this was going to be common in China. I'll spare you the full play-by-play (obviously!) but it was literally a hole in the floor. You can figure out the rest. I don't want to alarm anyone, as it was not a big deal. It's a stall, there's a flusher--you just have to balance. I think I'll have Emily start doing squat exercises with me at home to prepare.
After shopping, we dropped stuff off at the hotel and headed back out on foot. We walked back to the school and the nice apartment and tested the commute. It was a lot of walking. At the end of the commuting test, we were at Mark's office. It's in a great district called Jing'an. It has a lot of older buildings, cute shops and high end stores. Next door to his office is a wine store, followed by a cheese store (picnic, anyone?). There are bars and restaurants all around
as well. I see why he picked the area. Just like in the states, having a good business address is important, especially when you are a new local presence. I met Jiyi and Zhihua who work at Insight Shanghai. They are both researchers. Very nice and fun people. We talked about a few local differences, and I shared my abandonment of vegetarianism for this journey. Jiyi said that was good, because I'd be missing out on half the food if I didn't eat meat here. I'm not sure about that, but I agree most things do have some meat in them. Interestingly, most things have meat but also tofu and great veggies.The meat is not the focal point like in the US. It's just an ingredient among many ingredients. I'm a little hungry right now...I think that explains the food segway.
After the office visit (which turned into a long visit as Mark did work, signed official documents, and talked to a client while were were there), we went to dinner. We went back to that place Ray and his family took us to at the start of our trip. It has that great menu with pictures, and the
staff speaks a little English. I could eat there every day. They have one in Los Angeles! It's called Din Tai Fung. We went to the one in Xintiandi. That is the trendy area popular with tourists and Expats. Dinner was excellent. We tried different things this time, including a great noodle dish. Mark and I were struggling to serve ourselves, and the waitress came over and helped us by cutting the long noodles in the big bowl with chopsticks--oh good thinking! Just like we do for the kids at home with spaghetti. I'm not sure if this was an act of kindness for we tourists, or if this is a normal way to serve noodles here. Regardless, was soooo much easier after that! I had hot and sour soup too. It was the best hot and sour soup I've ever had. I'm so glad to learn that is not a made up Americanized Chinese soup. I love it so. Food is served very hot here. You have to be patient. I usually take a bite of a dumpling, for example, let the steam escape and have it cool a bit before gobbling it up. Maybe I'll finally break the
Gorodezky-fast-eating curse. Between the hot, hot food and the chopsticks for utensils, I don't see how I can avoid slowing down a bit.
Mark is learning quite a bit of Chinese. He's trying new words and phrases all the time. I need to follow his lead. He got into the cab last night and said where our hotel was before handing the driver the card. The driver repeated it back and seemed to appreciate Mark's efforts at speaking Chinese. Since today had been a no nap day, we were both pretty tired on the way back to the hotel. We fell asleep in the cab and woke up to the driver saying something to the effect of "we're here!" in Chinese.
I wanted to share something interesting about environmental concerns here in China. The government just past a law making it illegal to give out plastic bags at stores. Customers must buy them--the goal is to encourage people to bring bags from home. Interesting law, right? Also, the government is asking its workers to dress less formally in the summer months to help save energry (air conditioning). Another good idea. There are big concerns about energy and having
shortages here. The summers are very hot.
Tomorrow, we really need to decide on an apartment. I'm nervous and excited at the prospect of figuring this all out--but we are running out of time!
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Linda
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grocery store
Thanks for all the pictures, especially the videos. Your pan of the grocery store fascinated me, probably becsause of the scale and the cleanliness. Is the background noise as loud and conversational as it sounds? I was also struck by the loud music in the (Tai chi) park previously. Linda