I can’t believe we’ve been here for 6 months. Time flies when you’re having fun and keeping busy. This is what I’ve been up to for the past 6 months – give or take.
I have been…
exploring,
learning how to cook different cuisines,
learning Chinese,
cooking,
scoping out where to buy ingredients for my Western dishes,
exercising (not as much as I’d like to),
going out to lunch with friends,
volunteering at the kids’ school,
teaching English at a migrant school,
shopping,
playing tennis,
hiring an ayi,
firing our ayi (actually, I gave this dirty job to L),
finding another ayi,
and researching our travel destinations.
That’s my life right now.
Now let me give you more details.
I have been exploring and I fell in love with Yuyuan Gardens. It has everything. Shopping, food and a garden that can entertain my boys for an hour. Maybe 2. It has so much history there and looks like all the Chinese architecture you see from movies. I think I’ve gone 10 times so far.
Next stop was checking out the malls. Chinese like to shop. Like a lot. Like a little too much. They think expats like to shop that much too so they have built a million malls around the area. For example, from our home, if you go north 1 mile and draw a 1/2 mile radius circle – you will find 5 shopping malls. Mostly high end stores. And if you go to these said malls, 4 out of 5 are completely empty. Not empty in regards to closed stores, but empty in regards to people. People only use these malls to eat at the restaurants. And the stores at these malls are hella expensive ($$$$$). Hell, shopping for clothes in China is expensive. But branded clothes are super duper expensive. I remember going to a Gymboree kids clothing store and looking at the price of a kids jacket. I was guessing 300 RMB (50 USD). Wrong. It was 695 RMB (115 USD). So if I recognize a US store, I don’t even bother browsing because most likely it’ll be 2-6 times more expensive than back at home.
As far as friends – I have met so many great people here. Taiwanese, Korean, Australian, German, Dutch, American, Shanghainese are my mix of friends. It’s awesome. And I’m in complete awe with most of them because they can speak 2-4 languages – even the kids! Coming from the US, and even living in a bilingual household, I was adamant that I only wanted to learn English. Never even wanted to speak Tagalog even though my family spoke it. I was an American. English was my language. Now I’m here in China learning Mandarin and teaching the few things I have learned to the boys. Slowly but surely, right?
I have also been learning how to cook new things! I started going to a Korean cooking class. Made bulgogi (from scratch – I used to just buy a bottle of bulgogi sauce) and Korean seafood pancakes. I “watched” how to make dumplings. Haven’t tried it on my own yet though. And when I don’t have a conflict with my Chinese class, I’m going to learn how to make Indian food!
I’m in my third week of teaching English to the Chinese kids at a migrant school. A migrant school is where migrant workers’ kids go to school. It is government funded, but only a bare minimum. You will not find any heaters running during the winter time and no ACs on during the summer time. So dressing appropriately is key. There are several of us that go once a week. It was daunting the first time around. The bathrooms are one of a kind. NO stalls. NO walls. Just an open room with holes in the floor. The kids (ages 5-9) are so self sufficient. They wash their own dishes, pick up the food (that are in large cooking pots or bowls) from the kitchen, mop the floors and never have I heard one kid ask for help or complain. After the culture shock, it got better even with my little knowledge of the language. I did have to use Baidu translate several times to figure out what the kids were asking. But their affinity to want to learn English was stunning.
Oh yeah, remember my wonderful blog about our ayi? Well, we canned her. Actually, L did otherwise I would have given her a raise. I noticed she was taking little things here and there. Small things. She was also using my size 7 crocs to clean the showers. She’s a size 10. And we really didn’t need someone 40 hours a week. Now someone only comes 12 hours a week to help out. I think everyone in the house likes this arrangement so much better. We have our privacy back in the evenings.
So there you have it. This is my life here in Shanghai. I am literally busy every single day!! And I love all the friends I have made.
Here are a few more pictures of Shanghai, since a picture is worth a thousand words.
