Monday October 22

I am still working out an efficient system to publish new blog articles. Please hang in there for a while longer.

Saturday we spent all afternoon and evening watching volleyball. Abi’s team won the tournament in an exciting third game playoff. It was a very long day….we got just home before midnight. Her team advanced to an invitational tournament next weekend that will run from Thursday evening through Saturday evening. If they make it to this tournament again next year they will get to travel to Japan.

Yesterday while Abi was doing her homework, Tim and I went exploring. We crossed the river three times on three different ferries, walked all over Puxi, and then we took the subway under the river and walked home. The weather was very nice and we could have stayed out all night.

Today
We started the day with an early breakfast at East West. They have the best French toast anywhere!!! While Jan took Tim to work and Abi to school I walked to Carrafour to look for a pumpkin cookie cutter. I probably have 5 of these cookie cutters in our pantry in the US but I can’t find a single one in Shanghai. I will continue the search tomorrow. We finally found food coloring with the help of a friend….yippee!!!...now we can have orange pumpkin cookies when we find a cookie cutter.

After breakfast I took a group of friends to Puxi. Most of them have never been on the ferry so we decided to take a trip. We visited several of my favorite shopping places, walked through the back streets to a local food street, and then circled back to the fabric market and a little café that serves really good chocolate cake. Several people sampled strange foods, bought Chinese spices and bull penis (I am not kidding and yes we had lots of fun conversation about this interesting commodity), and we brought home several new white dishes.

The big river crossing

The food street....these people were making giant crepe things that smelled wonderful. We sampled them and they tasted like fortune cookies. As they cooled they got crispy.

Time for lunch

This little cafe is next door to the fabric market. They have great sandwiches and chocolate cake that rivals our family recipe.

Shelly, Ceyda, and Sherie buying spices...this is also the same street where they bought the bull parts.....
This was the funniest thing.....notice that the stick broom is chained and pad locked to the fence. It is getting close to Halloween.....maybe someone was afraid their transportation would be stolen.
Many, many, many fire hydrants....I think maybe it would be better if these were spread out around the city a little more.

There is a fire station at the ferry landing in Puxi. When we came back to the ferry station after our tour, the firemen were marching in formation.


Tonight Xiao Zhang made us a very good Chinese dinner. We had stir fried garlic green beans, a local rice dish with green stuff and “meat”, and pork spare ribs. It was all very delicious.

Spare ribs and garlic green beans

I saw this style of rice being made on the food street today....it is a Shanghai special recipe.


After dinner I went to visit a group Chinese lesson at a new language school. Since my teacher quit last week I decided it was time to look for a new school. Four teachers in 6 months is not my idea of consistent education. The school said the teacher had to quit because of a personal emergency….the teacher said that the school coordinator had offended her several times…and I had a lesson with the teacher on Wednesday and she never said a word to me about quitting. So…..I am moving on to a different school. AND…I decided that maybe a group lesson would be more fun. I am very very tempted to quit taking lessons. Maybe this change will keep me motivated to stick with it.