Wednesday,
January 2nd
On this date last year...
"More sightseeing..."
I'm barely remembering all the places we hit! But in sum, Shanghai is a very livable city. Jim had to remind me of all the places we went, so... here's the list of today's activities:
- Lunch at the Rainforest Cafe which was gross.
- Starbucks coffee downstairs which was great!
- Checked out the fitness center that Jim was thinking about signing up for, where we met one of many TALL CUTE GUYS IN SHANGHAI. Note: I am 5'0". Flora is 5'3" and she is NOT squatting! I couldn't even look him in the eye when we sat down with Jim, facing each other, to go over the details of the contract. "SURE BABY! Anything you want!"
- Went to the Shanghai Centre (Portman-Ritz Carlton) to see about my plane ticket back to Taipei. Met Coco Tang, our travel agent.
- Checked out the Jing An Temple nearby.
- Took the MRT to Renming Park.
- Visited the Shanghai Museum.
- Took a cab to Hsin Tien Di where we got drinks.
- Went back to Jim's side of town where we split up. He went to see his designer, Flora and I went to a really cool night market nearby where I finally got myself a heavy coat. It's FREEZING in Shanghai!
- Had hot pot (ma la huo guo) with new friends James, John, and Sunny. Sunny was absolutely endearing when he proclaimed, "Where are the HWA-CHOW WOMEN?!" James and John are originally from Taiwan.
- Jim, Flora and I went to get a foot massage and MAN was that ever funny. Some classic conversations we had there, and the room was designed JUST LIKE the one in Rush Hour 2!
So far there hasn't been anything that we've found particularly difficult except reading the simplified characters and converting to the pinyin system (great, both Chinese and English are different here, lol), but even that is getting easier. It's a BIG city yes, but not so big after awhile. Anyone coming out here who's ever lived in Taipei before will fit right in. It's a beautiful city actually. I like it a lot!
The coolest part is that my Mandarin is kicking in. It's fun to talk to the locals, lol. The people at the foot massage parlor definitely think that China is #1 and they just ASSUMED that we did too, i.e., they never ask what we think. They just stated a "fact" and then said, "don't you agree?" LOL!
Click on the photo for more of today's pictures.
Also, some of the words in Mandarin are a little different here than in Taipei, or so we are learning.
For example, to say "turn right", people say, "Hsiao guai". To turn left, "Da guai". Also, according to the guy who did my feet, people don't usually say "Nan sheng" for men and "Nur sheng" for women. They say "nan hai tze" and "nur hai tze". And of course most people know to use "Yao" instead of "Yi" for the number "1".
Little things like that.
It's kinda funky, know what I mean?!
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