The girls' playdate with Hannah and Grace

Rebecca and Allison have developed a very nice friendship with two sisters their same ages who live directly behind us, but go to the other American School. Hannah is learning the same recorder program as Rebecca, so the two of them put on a concert for us. Grace and Allison took turns announcing.



For the encore, they performed a play.

The girls' first Chinese haircuts

When the girls needed haircuts last week, we rode our bikes over to the salon next to the superstore, which is really quite nice (I've found that a lot of people I know at the Emerald use it for nail and massage services as well.). For about 8 dollars they got a wash, cut, and blow dry in a full service salon!

Zhujiajiao continued

We also took a gondola ride.

Zhujiajiao

Last Sunday after Hebrew School and basketball we went to see the ancient water town of Zhujiajiao, which is the water town closest to Shanghai.



The kids had a lot of fun going through the maze of lake rocks in the Kezhi garden.

Rebecca's basketball team

Rebecca is on a basketball team. There are two girls teams in 10 and under that play each other every week (small league) on Sundays. Rebecca is loving it and making usually at least one basket and one assist every week.

Allison's playdate and Lauren weathers the cold

This is Allison playing in the indoor playground at the Emerald with her friend Niki from school.

Henry took this picture of me when we got back from swim practice (I pick him up on the motortrycle and it's been so cold). Actually the past few days have been a little warmer. This photo is from March 4th and it was still really cold then. And good news, we got word that the pool closer to us has finally reopened, so now Henry can walk!

Henry's field trip

On March 5th I went with Henry and his class to the Shanghai Museum and the Urban Planning Museum.

More Reasons to Hate Carrefour

I finally braved going back to Carrefour for the first time since Chinese New Year (and even spotted vaseline). I bought some hair spray oil (in lieu of detangler) for the girls and a memory stick for Henry for school. There is one cash register in the cosmetics area where you have to pay for all cosmetic items (including the spray I was buying). I had to wait while these people in front of me bought all of those huge boxes of large size products - 3 carts full (clearly stocking their spa or hair salon). It was unbelievable and very slow!

Lauren's flower arrangements

Since I have not done anything remotely creative in recent years, this is a big accomplishment and quite a luxury for me. Plus, it's really fun! Here I am with my first completed arrangement.

Here it is back in my living room. Oh, can you guess how I brought it home? On the motortrycle, of course!
Here's my second arrangement.

Lauren finally begins flower arranging

Yeah, after talking about it for 6 weeks, I finally started flower arranging this month and have now been to two classes. The woman holding the flowers is laoshi (teacher) and the woman next to her is the Emerald activities director who translates for us. There are usually 4 other students.
Every week we start with this bowl, which I bought along with my tools.

California Pizza Kitchen

Figuring the kids were needing a little California familiarity, we took them to CPK for dinner after the trip to see the Disney School site. It was the same menu as the US, but they used spaghetti noodles instead of penne on the kids meals, and although they passed out bread plates as soon as we sat down, they never brought the bread and when we asked about it, they said they didn't have any bread! It is China after all.....

I got a job!

So, my retirement did not last too long! Unemployed since November when I left my job at LA County Jail after almost 10 years there, I contacted the counseling center at the Expat Community Center shortly after my arrival in Shanghai. I went to have coffee with the clinical coordinator of the Counseling Center, who happens to also live at the Emerald. She is a Dutch psychologist who has been here for 4 years. She informed me that she already had 2 eating disordered patients that she wanted to assign to me and asked me to join the team of (as far as I can tell) 6 clinicians (from Canada, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the US) working mostly part-time out of two centers. I can make my own hours, work as little or as much as I want, and get paid! I saw my first client today! I am very excited about being able to see individual clients again, and about pursuing my interest in working with clients with eating disorders, as well as hopefully developing some expertise in working with expatriate issues. I'm also really looking forward to the intellectual stimulation I'll get from working with colleagues from all over the world. If you want to read more about the counseling center, the link is:
http://www.communitycenter.cn. Click on programs and then counseling (and you can see my picture and profile). It's also going to be a great way to get hooked into the expat community since the community center runs all kinds of events and the counseling center is right on site.

Wait a Whale

The Mandarin is tough. We are fortunate that there are a lot of businesses and restaurants that cater to Westerners and have some English. On the other hand, daily life is still filled with numerous situations in which we have communication difficulties.

For example, there's China Mobile. Since my cell phone is not billed to a company and since we do not have a Chinese credit card (or bank account), the only way to pay for my cell phone is to prepay for the minutes. You do this in China by buying these refill cards in quantities of 100 RMB. They are carbon paper envelopes that have a pin number sealed inside and you call a phone number from your cell phone to type in the pin number. When my cell phone suddenly stopped working just before Chinese New Year, it occurred to me that I needed to figure out the refill situation. (I have since come to suspect that the inexplicable text messages I get periodically from China Mobile may be a signal that I am about to run out of minutes, but of course, I'm not sure.)

I was quite excited to find that the Super Store sold the refills,but I was so confused about what to do with them once I had paid for them (there were no English instructions on them), that the woman from the superstore said she would take care of making the call and adding the minutes for me. "How easy was that," I thought jubilantly. The second time I bought refills (prior to going to Hong Kong, per Sarah's instructions to pay for international roaming), I was determined to figure out how to do it myself since both Sarah and Lilybeth knew how, and I figured that if I'm going to be here for 2 years I can't be totally dependent on the woman from the superstore.

There were, I was informed, English menus. The English menus, however, have such a bad accent that they are impossible to understand and the words I could understand made no sense! It took me several tries, lots of frustration, and a lot of help from Lilybeth (just press #2) to figure it out, but I persevered and did it. The best part, when you successfully type in the pin, you get a menu that very clearly states, "Now wait a whale!"

Along the same topic of bizarre translations, was this sign in one restroom that had me laughing.


Then, of course, there are the all Chinese directories, which are just as bad!

Site of the First Disney School

About 10 days ago (I'm still behind in my posts, but have been recently discovered a way to post from my own computer so that should help me to keep more up to date) we took the kids to see the site of the first Disney School (165 Maoming Road).
It's about to undergo a big renovation.
Nevertheless, the kids thought it was pretty cool to see what Daddy's working on (and it's a concrete thing, unlike all those days he was just valuing companies)!


It's in a great neighborhood. Here's a view of the street.

Hurray for Hot Lunch

Have I mentioned that one of the great things about SCIS is they have hot lunch every day? After volunteering in Rebecca's class I got to have lunch with her, and then went back to the cafeteria with Allison when it was her turn for lunch.

Chickens and Mattresses on the Lane

Revisiting our recurring themes of chickens and mattress....

This Chinese woman was washing her chicken at a sink on the street. (I didn't see a head!)

BTW, after the tour, I did finally get some chickens (uncooked) from the Portman Ritz deli and they were much better and did not come with a head.

When I saw this mattress I thought that Eric and I had better stop complaining about ours...

More Scenes from the Lane

Look at the contrast between the drab and run-down lane and the beautiful wooden staircase inside one of the old houses.

Lane Walk with Gangfeng Wang

The last week in February I went on a tour sponsored by the American Women's Club and led by Gangfeng Wang, who is also the photographer who took our family photos when we visited Shanghai in November (when my bag got snatched by the guy on a bicycle!). The tour was of the area around the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Shanghai (also where our photos were taken). The group met at the Four Seasons and then took off around the neighborhood. Nestled amongst the high-rises in what appears from the street to be a modern part of the city are these lanes where life is totally different.

Gangfeng explained that in the early 1900s, the people living in Shanghai lived in "shikumen" or stone gate houses. During the cultural revolution, the wealthy city property owners were told they no longer owned the property and the government resettled into the houses multiple families from the villages. Over the generations, the families continued to grow and remained in the same space with no improvements. The buildings had many nice architectural features, but had not been maintained at all. In many there are no toilets or running water. The families share a kitchen and each family has its own wok. Many of the shikumen have been razed and according to Gangfeng the only people unhappy about it are the tourists. The families are all given bigger more modern apartments plus cash payments. The government is happy to get rid of the poor conditions the people are living in, and the real estate developers are given the opportunity to build big projects. The houses themselves were in really poor condition.

Eric drives the motortrycle

One evening, when we needed vanilla from the Super Store to complete a chocolate chip recipe, Eric saved the day on the motortrycle (appropriately wearing his leather jacket)! Doesn't he look tough? Did I mention previously it even has a headlight?

Sword Fight

Henry was inspired by his studies of Medieval times and recruited Rebecca into a battle.