Let me 'splain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.

 October 11, 2012

Sorry I've been MIA!  I've been so busy teaching and running around Shanghai I haven't had time to post!  Allow me to catch you up by showing you a random bunch of photos that I've taken over the past week.

 The woman, right here in this photo has a live goose stuffed into that rolling backpack. She was standing outside a convenience store and as I came out the door the goose honked at me. I jumped back, surprised and she promptly stuffed the goose's head back into a plastic bag inside that backpack and then tied up the handles. I guess someone is having a roasted bird for dinner tonight!

Cam is totally obsessed with tea so we went with him to a tea market that one of our Chinese coworkers told us about.  The sweet tea woman gave us a free tasting of all of her most popular teas and they were AMAZING.  We had such a great time chatting with her but she was self-conscious about her English and mentioned that her Japanese is better.  Cam is almost fluent in Japanese so he got really excited and they prattled off to each other in Japanese for a long time.  We bought some awesome tea and before we left the darling lady gave us all a bunch of free samples. So fun!

I can't even tell you how many times I've bought food and it's totally not what I thought it was going to be.  Every time I eat it's a gamble.  Here I bought a small roll from a bakery case that said "cheese and chili pizza" and found that it was filled with hot dogs!  There's hot dogs in everything!  I can't escape the hot dogs!

 Shopping and Sangria with Chelsea

 This week I went to a government building to complete an interview for my work visa.  (Which means I'll probably be leaving for Hangzhou some time in the next week.)  Afterwards, my friend Alex (she's been in Shanghai for three years) took me to her favorite Mexican restaurant and to walk around the French Concession.  Yes, you heard me right.  MEXICAN FOOD!  And they had a SALSA bar!  What???

 The French Concession is a gorgeous area of Shanghai where mostly expats and rich Chinese live.  Usually this food would be way too expensive but we went when they were having a $10 lunch deal that included a margarita. 
More pics of the French Concession below...

China is the land of rip off goods.  But what's weird is how open they are about it. Not only can you buy incredible quality bootlegs of any DVD or CD in the world but the vendors have store fronts!  They have a million titles and sell freely out of these stores even in the most upscale neighborhood.  (I bought Season 5 of Mad Men for about $6, Looper was for sale for about $1).  It's very common to see fake Apple dealers everyone and I've heard that there are even fake Disney English centers.   

There are tiny stores everywhere.  Some, like this one, can only fit one or two people inside at a time.  Customers hang around outside, waiting for their turn to go in.

How freaky is this?  Cherries in every color of the rainbow.

Hardly anyone that I work with cooks, not the Chinese or the expats.  Alex tried to convince me that is costs the same to eat out in China and when I told her that was impossible she made me go into a grocery store to prove her point.  Turns out I was right (if you don't buy imported stuff like wine or blue cherries) but I'll concede, it IS cheap to eat out in China.

 Homemade security system: wall lined with shards of glass.  I don't know about burglars, but I find this intimidating.

 On a rooftop.  I was thinking that this could be my Halloween costume...

This is what most of the streets look like in The French Concession area

We had so much fun at the acrobatics show last week, we decided to go to another one!  This is the most popular acrobat show in Shanghai, called ERA.  It was a big budget show in a large dome threater.  I was glad we went because they had totally different acts than the last show, but I think I might've liked the rinky-dink, low budget performance more.

 We were pretty taken with the super attractive man doing the aerial scarf routine but you have to pay to take photos with the performers.  Look closely, we snuck one with him way in the background.

 They couldn't complete all of this act because one of them almost fell!!  It was terrifying!  I can't believe how dangerous some of these acts are, the Chinese are crazy.

 Today Stacy and Cam are off to their permanent cities (Nanjing and Ningbo respectively).  We spent some time together last night and I had breakfast with Cam this morning and helped him get his luggage out to his taxi.  Saying goodbye to both of them was so sad!  (I'm so weary of goodbyes.)  There were lots of hugs and promises to visit each other soon, a pledge I hope we'll keep!