Dentist and Shopping

Since Henry kept his braces on, I agreed with the orthodontist that I would get his teeth checked and cleaned. I took him to a very nice Singaporean dentist who spent 2 hours cleaning his teeth. They have the most state of the art equipment, including 3-d cameras, 3-d x-rays and lasers.

Check out the dental technicians' hats!
Also, in April I discovered the fabric market. It's a huge warehouse filled with stalls of different tailors who each have different types of fabric. You can have anything imaginable made. My friend, Anna and I have been having jackets, pants, and t-shirts made. We've designed our own leather jackets and have had our favorite pants and t-shirts copied. It's very inexpensive and the best way to get clothing that fits in Shanghai. It's actually quite a luxury to be able to play a part in creating your clothing and getting items that fit you perfectly.

More April happenings

Eric and I made some Chinese friends (through his work contacts) and they took us to a jazz concert at the Jin Mao tower. These musicians spent a lot of time explaining to the Chinese audience about jazz because it's not a type of music they're familiar with.

Here's a scene from my Chinese lesson. The Chinese have words for "3 days ago and 3 days from now." Today is jintian. Tomorrow is mingtian. The day after is houtian. Then dahoutian.

Jumble loves getting into the baby toys!! Smart dog, huh!
I took two shopping tours through the community center. We visited commodity markets, flower markets, and food markets. This is a rather gross "wet market," which is where most Chinese shop, rather than at supermarkets. (When I get the rest of Danielle's pictures I will have some more interesting photos about wet markets.) The Chinese love everything fresh and don't waste any animal parts.

Field trip, MSG, and more!

Rebecca's class had a scavenger hunt on the subway field trip and I went along and chaperoned and learned how to ride the subway. It was quite useful because Eric later learned from Rebecca how to ride the subway. The Shanghai subway system is reliable and safe and clean, although extremely crowded at times. It is expanding. Currently the closest stop to our house is about 30 minutes by car, so we will continue to rely primarily on Xiao Hu.

Allison slipped on our marble stairs and ended up with a gash on her chin. We had to take her in a taxi (Xiao Hu had gone home for the night) to the hospital on a Sunday night. We got a great American doctor who was very patient. He tried to drug Allison so she would be calm enough for him to get the stitches in neatly. After about 4 hours and 4 shots of valium she still wouldn't calm down and we had to recruit the security guard to help hold her down. Here she is after it was all done.
This chicken is always promoting this fast food restaurant in Tomorrow Square.
I had never seen MSG before; I noticed it at Metro. It looks like salt.

April in Shanghai

By April we'd pretty much gotten into a groove. The kids are really settled into school and all happy. Construction started on Eric's first school. I kept busy with flower arranging, some interesting tours, a field trip with Rebecca, fitness classes including but not limited to yoga, and Mandarin (which I am working very hard on and actually making some progress). We also had our first trip to the Shanghai emergency room. I also discovered the fabric market!!! Then we got busy with Passover and more visitors. I will try to go into more detail on most of the above on the next several posts!

By the way, the motortrycle has proven invaluable for transporting home my flower arrangements!
I caught some scenes of Rebecca playing with her friends at school on the very popular new play equipment (European) called the galaxy.

More Behai Park from Beijing Trip

The kids loved Behai Park, especially the paddle-boating.




It was a great trip and we loved sharing it with the Swartzes!

Some Final Beijing Photos (Ok a month late!)

The last day in Beijing we (Muhlheims and Swartzes) went to the Forbidden City.


And then played with our guide, Angie, at Behai Park.

We're fine!

If you've heard about the earthquake in Chengdu today we wanted to let you know we are fine.

I actually started my second job, with Parkway Health, today. Since no patients were scheduled for me yet (the marketing person and clinic manager were on vacation last week), I rode around to the various clinics to meet the doctors. While we were riding through Shanghai, we saw mobs of people standing on the street and looking up into the sky and talking on their cell phones. We thought maybe a celebrity was in the area (although it didn't explain why they were looking up). They were spread out over a very large area. It was much later that I learned that people felt buildings shaking in Shanghai and a lot of the tall buildings were evacuated, including the Jin Mao tower. Interestingly, the JW Marriot, located next to Parkway, was not evacuated even though it is 59 stories.

Pictures and updates on the month of April will be up soon. My tech supporter and darling husband has been jammed with work; hence the pictures have been delayed. Highlights include Passover in Shanghai, my parents' visit, and our trip to Japan. Hopefully I'll have some posts later this week!