It's hard to believe another month has passed since I posted my last blog. I have lots of pictures to share. We have now survived 2 months in Shanghai (10 weeks to be exact)!! Since my plan is to come back next June so the kids can start back year-round school, I only have 8 months to go, :-). We are all getting a little home sick. The kids have their ups and downs too. Greg's parents arrived last week. They will be staying for 4 weeks. We are so excited to have them here. We are taking them to Beijing next week to see the Great Wall, Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.
We got our air shipments. The kids came home from school and screamed when they walked in the front door. They said it felt like Christmas morning. They couldn't decide what to play with first. It was hard to get them to focus on homework that evening. The kids had stuff out of boxes and scattered everywhere. Now my empty, clean house was a mess!! Luckily, my ayi was scheduled to be here the next morning. She helped me get everything unpacked and put away all the clothes. Out of everything that we shipped, the thing that I was most excited about was our flatware to eat with. I was really tired of plastic. All of our plastic forks and spoons are now stuffed in the back of a cabinet and hasn't been out since, :-).
Greg has enjoyed having his bike here. He has been riding it some to IBM each day. It's about a 20 minute ride to work. The challenge is to get home before dark. The sun goes down at 5:30pm. It's dangerous to be riding at night. I was excited to have my bike too but I started shopping for a scooter. I wanted to broaden the area that I could travel without a taxi, bus or metro. My ayi and I shopped for 2 weeks until we found a good deal. I will post some pictures later. I got an electric scooter big enough for both kids to right with me. It will go about 25 miles per hour. It's hard to believe it was less than $400. I laughed before about all the stuff people carry on scooters. Last week, I had 3 big bags of groceries, two pillows and my purse on it. The pills had to ride between my legs to get home. Glad no one had a camera to take a picture, :-).
I think they may have finally fixed the smelly master bathroom. A different maintenance guy showed up one day and took a look. Air was blowing up through the vent in my bathroom floor. That shouldn't have been happening. It was smellier than ever in there. Good, now they believe me. He walked downstairs and was staring at the kitchen ceiling. They didn't speak English so I wasn't sure what they were planning. One guy left and came back with a ladder, plastic and a hammer. They ripped a huge hole in my kitchen ceiling over my stove. What a mess! Once they were able to see the plumbing in my bathroom floor, they saw that none of the pipes had a "U" in them to kept the septic smell out. They had to fix all the pipes. Well, if one bathroom is that way, all 6 bathrooms in the house would be that way. My ayi asked if they are going to fix them all. They said they would wait to see if they start smelling. After a week, they fixed the whole in the ceiling and painted it. Now my kitchen ceiling is two colors of white. I guess that is better than a smelly bathroom!!!
Greg and Anna have been taking bike rides on Sat mornings along the river behind our compound. She came home from one ride crying. They had ridden in a different direction and rode by some really poor housing. She saw a lady cleaning her clothes in the river. Anna said, "Mommy, why was she washing her clothes that she was going to wear in the fish pee water"? The river doesn't look clean. She was also upset by the tiny little house the lady was living in. It was no bigger than our dining room. We had discussed that there were really poor people in China but this was the first time that she really saw how they lived. I told her about the apartment that our ayi lives in. It's a really small apartment with no doors inside. Nothing on the floors and no ceiling. No kitchen cabinets, stove, microwave or refrig. No heat or air. She lives there with her husband and sister. That has to be tough. Anna now has a better appreciation of what we have.
I will find a few minutes later today to post more of our pictures from Taiwan, Anna's school, and other places in Shanghai.
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