We’re getting a little behind on our posts but working hard to catch up. We were in Beijing around Feb 17 and 18th during the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday. It was great to visit the capital during such an important national holiday…but it was also really cold. That first picture is the famous CCTV building built before the 2008 Olympics. We didn’t actually go there; just took this picture out the cab window. What’s not shown in this picture is the devastated building next to it. (more…)
After spending Chinese New Year’s Eve at Austin’s we headed north to visit the family of our friends, Xiao and David. Xiao and I worked together at Allegiance and have stayed close friends since then. We were so thrilled when she invited us to visit her family! Everyone there was so nice and very welcoming. Thanks to both Xiao and David for such a great experience! We hope you enjoy the photos.
On our flight this steward started selling stuff. It took us awhile to figure out what he was doing…. it was basically like QVC, but in-flight! (more…)
The Year of the Tiger!
Our first night of Chinese New Year was spent at Austin’s parent’s house. They live in a beautiful home in the outskirts of Shanghai. We’ve been told it’s a popular neighborhood with expats. Hope you enjoy a few photos from that night.
新年快乐 (= Xīnnián kuàilè = Happy New Year!) (more…)
Here’s a goodbye video I made with Coop before we left. It’s easy to get her riled up, and she loved tearing around the empty house (furniture was gone, but you can see our suitcases and piles of stuff to take). Enjoy! It’s 2-minutes long.
We’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that the restaurant scene in Shanghai is awesome! We’ve already been to several different places (never the same place twice) and are keeping a list of yummy restaurants we’d take people when they come visit.
Mi Tierra– Mexican restaurant and Taco bar. It’s one of my favorite places so far. Good mexican food is hard to come by here, so we were all ecstatic to find this place. A very cool space too. The above pic is our appetizer course, which was followed by some great tacos and AMAZING desserts.
This pic is from Bellagio cafe, a chain here with pretty good food. We go get late-night dessert here pretty often. The above pic is one of the most popular items, a huge mound of shaved ice! In the background is our new friend Austin, who just moved to Shanghai from NYC (but his family lives here). He’s opening a new restaurant in less than 2 months and we can’t wait! We’re so thankful we get all his input on the best restaurants in Shanghai and we love when he orders for the table. Yum!
Most restaurant posts to follow soon. Wo uh le. (I’m hungry)
We have finally uploaded photos of our apartment. Here is it is… in all its glory!
The living room.
The kitchen.
Check out those amazing red cabinets. You’ll notice no dishwasher or oven. My hands are already feeling dry from just a couple weeks of handwashing. It’s also interesting that all kitchens here have doors. We think it has something to do with all the garlic, oil, and fish used in cooking. It’s actually kind of nice and something I think makes sense. (more…)
We got up early Monday morning to make it to an American bar here called Malone’s to watch the Superbowl. It’s the first time since we’ve been here that we could hear English all around us! It was actually kind of strange…. I also noticed what a distinctive look Americans have. I can’t really put it into words, but there’s just something about Americans that stands out.
This Friday is Chinese New Years Eve and we’ve been invited to a friend’s house to celebrate. It’s the same house we spent Thanksgiving at when we visited Shanghai in November. We’ve been told to come prepared for lots of drinking and gambling, so I plan on doing some practice online Mahjong before then. On 2/14 we’re headed to Shijiazhuang, a city 2 hours south of Beijing by train. One of my friends will be there visiting her family and we are really looking forward to spending a couple of days with them. Most of the people we know here are Chinese Americans, so it will be a special treat to spend time with China Chinese. 
After a couple days there we will head up to Beijing for a few days. It’s going to be pretty cold, but it will be nice to see Beijing and compare it to Shanghai.
I’m anxious to check out the more rural areas of China, but I think spring will be a better time for that. It’s a bit cold now for that kind of travel.
Speaking of weather– the last few days we’ve had an unexpected bout of warm temperatures. The high yesterday was 72 degrees! It was raining, but I didn’t care…. it felt so good to be warm. It’s supposed to get cold again starting tomorrow, but boy was the warmer weather appreciated. Especially since we’re headed north soon. bbbrrrrrrrr!!
Thanks for all your comments. We love hearing from all of you!
We finally found the camera charger but still haven’t gotten into the habit of taking pictures all that often (we’ll get better, I hope). For now, here are some kind of unrelated ones we’ve taken over the past week.
Our place is in Jing’an. The more we learn about our area, the happier we are about the apartment we chose. We’ve told a lot of people about our place—people that have lived in Shanghai for years—and they all say we couldn’t have chosen a better location for getting to know the city. Lots of restaurants, bars, shopping within easy walking distance. It’s also very close to the Jing’an Sculpture Park, where we took a few pics the other day:
We’ll probably take more photos in the sculpture park later…there are some giant oxen sculptures I’m planning to make Ashley climb on top of like she’s riding one (don’t tell her).
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Here’s a pretty typical Shanghai family on their motor…thing. Ash said it was rude of me to take the picture even though they were staring at me moments before (presumably for being white and tall).
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Couldn’t resist taking this picture of a pile of chickens for sale at Carrefour, the so-called Western grocery store (it’s French). This is from the one in Zhongshan Park, which we went to first.
After hearing it called “the Western grocery store,” we were a little surprised at the piles of chickens and other, less recognizable food items. There was a section of imported foods, but all in all it was a pretty unfamiliar shopping experience for us. I had to lift our shopping cart at one point so that some employees could roll a palette truck through. So much for the customer having the right of way!
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That’s it for now, but we’ll get pics of the apartment up as soon as we clean up enough to take non-embarrassing photos. Thanks for all the comments on the blog! Great to hear from everyone. Will post again soon.
Sorry, it’s been awhile since our last blog post. Once we moved into our apartment we got an idea of what life for a foreigner here is really like! It’s a little overwhelming when everything is so new. Many things still need to be resolved, but we’re pretty happy with our new place and are excited to get settled in.
So… where to start????
We moved into our place on the afternoon of 1/29 (Friday). Thankfully, the place we rented came furnished. It’s two bedrooms, has a bed, mattress, closet, dresser, and nightstands in each room. The living room has a TV, couch, and the dining nook has a kitchen table. While the style of the furniture isn’t what we would pick if given a choice, it’s in pretty good condition, so we are happy with it. The only major complaint was the mattress– which brings me to problem #1 of the last few days. (more…)