We are finishing up our 12th week here in Shanghai. I have a love/hate relationship with Shanghai. I love a lot of things here. I love the food, the friends I have made, exploring the area, learning Chinese, the friendships my boys have made, the endless shopping, the boys’ school, did I mention the food? and even being immersed in a Chinese speaking country. But I do miss some things from home that I can’t get here, well some I can, but not easily.
1. Getting CLEAN ice water anytime I want it. For example, I just want to go to a restaurant and order a nice tall glass of ice water. Everyone drinks warm drinks over here. Warm during the winter months AND even the summer months. And since the water has metal contaminates in it, boiling the water makes it even worse! So we have to buy bottled water.
2. Jimmy Dean sausage. MSG and all, Jimmy Dean sausage is delicious. It’s not the healthiest things to eat especially since I have to watch my salt intake. But I do miss it since I had a few recipes that called for JDS. I did find a knock off recipe, but it just doesn’t taste the same.
3. Cape Cod Salt and Vinegar chips. They have Kettle and some other brand of salt and vinegar chips. They just don’t have that extra special tanginess that Cape Cod does.
4. Publix (especially the subs). One day I went shopping at Carrefour and this is what I saw. Just tell the butcher what portion you want and he’ll cut it up for you right then and there! Unfortunately it will never be BOGO!
5. Amazon. They have amazon.cn here, but it’s not the same. They do have taobao, but it’s such poor quality stuff. Very cheap though!
6. Tostitos nacho cheese. They have tostitos chips here and tostitos salsa, but not the nacho cheese. The nacho cheese makes our taco salads oh so much better.
7. Being able to drive. Having a driver is great. Having 1 car with 4 people in the household requires a lot of planning. It is easy to get Uber or a taxi here, but it’s so easy just using Sam, our driver.
8. The internet – this should really be #2 or even #1 on this list. We had FIOS for the past 8 years. It was extremely fast. The internet here is like using dial up. And having to use a VPN service to get some websites in the US makes it even slower! You seriously want to pull your hair out sometimes!!!
9. Living in a house… especially with boys. So my youngest LOVES anything that has to do with basketball… especially bouncing them. Since we live in a flat, he can’t really bounce the balls since it’ll be too loud for the neighbors downstairs. I’m just waiting for them to come up here to yell at us. I told my youngest he has to open the door.
10. Air quality. I am writing on my blog today because the pollution was 240. Beautiful weather, just bad AQI. My plan was to go out and walk around to get some Christmas shopping done since my husband needs Sam today, but I am letting my lungs breath fresh recycled air in the apartment.
Looks like there will be a direct correlation between bad AQI and a new blog post. 🙂