Well, it is very odd to not be at the lake for memorial day.  Our weekend started with us trying to do Skype with my family at the lake only to find out our sound board in the computer got burned up Friday when they came to replace the TV....so no sound -- we talked to Apple and get to go tthe Best Buy here in Shanghai to see if they can help us....we have been there twice and typically there is one or two people who can speak english -- I'm sure we will have a good story from that.  One thing we have learned in China is that NOTHING is ever easy...even if you think it is, it isn't.  Also, if you think it will take an hour -- it will actually take at least 2 -- unless its a massage and then they run right on time!

So later on Saturday after our trauma of the computer we went walking around an area to the south of our apartment...those are the pictures on the gallery....it is crazy that big parts of this city still have community water -- which means people do not have running water in their homes and they use a common sink for washing....they also still use chamber pots.  You can occasionally see people carrying them -- not sure where they go -- but we don't really want to know that badly.....One street went went down had so many people and there was live food, dead food, and lots of bloody parts all over -- Molly really, really wanted to leave!  No wonder she has almost become vegetarian....It feels very strange to stand out so much -- we are called "round eyes" in this part of the world...and on that street with probably 1000 or more people we were the only ones like us.  They are always polite, but I am sure they are wondering what we are doing on that street -- because we clearly are not buying food....

Sunday was beautiful and after having a massage -- we went to the pool to lay around for a couple of hours to feel like we were on vacation -- not in a huge city with 24 million people.  Work is busy for us both and unlike the US we do not have tomorrow off -- so we will be at work :(


Mike Gies
6/21/2010 09:58:50 am

Language differences (or even food differences) should not be a problem, as long as there exists an adequate attempt at bilingual explanations. Witness this Chinese menu with English translations (from Shanghai, too, I think) that I ran across several years ago:
http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order/

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