I have never read much less written a blog before. I will try, through this blog, to give you all an idea of what it means to live here. We live in "bubble" so it is a sanitized version of Shanghai. I say this because where we are is mostly expats and the entire area caters to the non-Chinese and it's much easier than what we call "regular China". We have and will continue to venture out to regular China and I will share what I can. I have many more pics etc already but need to take more time to get them posted and figure out how to manipulate this blog.
The children are doing quite well here and school is going along well too. Brooke is currently on her school trip to Beijing and has already been gone five days - she returns tonight.
I will have pictures to share soon from her trip and also of other adventures we have taken. The day to day things we see will be most entertaining on their own - I just have to stop long enough to capture them on camera. Wait til you see the local supermarket or the way our subdivision is maintained.... more to come.
Thanks and please leave comments as well.
The wall was beautiful Brooke said. Eight km in one day was tough though. Some parts were flat and you slipped on gravel while other parts were like clinging a ladder.
Brooke spent 4 hours on the Great Wall while in Beijing. She not only walked it but repelled off of it. It was so hard to climb and felt like a real accomplishment. She walked 8 kilometers on the wall that day. Does not want to ever do it again. Mark and I plan to go as a family so I'm not sure what we will do about that.
Brooke said she failed at chopsticks....ha ha .... All her friends were laughing at her :)
Brooke flew to Beijing for five days with her 7th grade class. Here she is grinding the corn after she picked and shucked it. A taste of what the Chinese farmers do. She said it was really fun but really hard.
Recently, Mark and I were invited to a dinner with some work friends. We went to the fish market along the river which has blocks of vendors selling seafood as seen here. You go and actually hand select the items you wish to eat. Afterwards you walk back to the restaurant and they prepare the food for you and bring it to your table. So within one half hour, your food is selected, prepared and served. We had every kind of seafood you can imagine and some we have never heard of and made up our own names for. It was quite an experience. We sat at a huge round table with a very large lazy susan in the middle. All the food was served family style and you just took what you wanted. No forks, just eat the best you can with chop sticks and your hands. It was not pretty but the food was good and most of all FRESH.
Many have asked what our new home looks like. Surprise, it's not 800 sq feet and in a high rise. This community is very western and these houses were built just for expats and Chinese passport holders are not allowed to live here per the government.
