Monday:
Monday was our 2 yr anniversary! I can't believe we've been married 2 years already! And who knew we'd be celebrating it in Shanghai, China? Craziness! We went out for a romantic dinner to an Italian restaurant (we couldn't have Bravo's as part of our tradition, so we just had Italian instead). The restaurant was called Va Bene and it was in an area of town called Xintiandi. The area is very quaint, a lot like Hyde Park. Dinner was fantastic, definitely more expensive than we're used to, but it was a special occasion. I just feel so blessed to be married to such a wonderful man who loves the Lord so much (oh yeah, and loves me too). I am looking forward to many more anniversaries!! (although, I don't think many more will happen in China).
Tuesday:
We ladies thought we'd bring a little taste of home to the dinner table Tuesday night. Emily, bless her heart, brought skyline chili from the states. We cooked Skyline, spaghetti, and toasted bread with butter, and invited the 2 bachelors, Joey & Matt (also in the MBA program) over to dinner. I think they were very grateful to have a normal meal for a change, as we all were. It was a great time of just relaxing in the apartment, eating food that probably upset our stomachs more than the Chinese food....Ahhh, home :)
Wednesday:
My days are all blurring together, so I'm not sure what we did during the day while the boys were at work. But I do know we spent about 6 hrs at a few pearl shops one of the days, so I'm going to say that was on Wednesday. :) We spent a lot of time looking for pearls and finishing up any pearl shopping that needed to be done. Let's just say it is all very overwhelming and tiring with all the haggling and bartering. The longer we take to shop, the more we pay, because by that point, we are all way to exhausted to put up a good fight for the right price. At that point we say heck with it all. Ugh!
That night, we all went out to a restaurant not far from us to have Mexican food on Mexican night. They have all types of food, but Matt Byrnes (one of the other MBA guys) invited us to go with him to get 20% of all Mexican food....also very good! The worst part of the night was, however, a woman and her 2 children begging for money. Matthew and Michael both gave the kids some money to get them to go away, but unfortunately that made it worse. They all kept hanging on to each of us and followed us for a couple blocks. Not until we got into a cab did they all go away.
Thursday:
We went out to a Shanghainese restaurant and had one of the best meals we've had while staying here, in my opinion. There was nothing special to it, but it was all so good. Meals here are typically family style, where you order about a dish per person, and when they bring them out, they place them on a lazy susan in the middle of the table so everyone can try a little of each. One of the more interesting dishes that night was a baked duck, filled with rice and vegetables. The whole duck was there, head and all. Fantastic.
After dinner, we took a night riverboat cruise on the Huangpu River. We were able to see the city of Shanghai at night, which was beautiful. We rode up along the Bund (the area along the river) and passed the Oriental Pearl Tower. I got quite a few pictures of that which you will see at a later time :)
Friday:
Another dinner out, we went to Barbarosa in the middle of People's Park, a park in the middle of the city (a small version of Central Park, if you will). It was a nice little restaurant with a good setting.
So far, we have had Chinese (Shanghainese, Sichuan, Yunan, etc), American, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, and I'm not sure what else. But we sure have taken advantage of the diversity in this city :)
Saturday:
We went to the Shanghai Zoo. It's not nearly as nice as the Cincinnati Zoo, but what is for $4 a ticket? It was actually a pretty depressing zoo because the facilities for the animals were very poor and very small. In fact, most of the animals look depressed, lying around in their cages, dirty and motionless. And there would be only 1 animal, for the most part, of each kind. We saw a gorilla (by "a", I mean one gorilla, lying in a small room only about 3x the size of the gorilla itself), a panda, a polar bear (who was very dirty and had only mirky green water to swim in), and many many Chinese people. I have never been so saddened by animals in captivity than I was at this zoo. At least in Cincinnati, the animals have a whole habitat that they can roam in and be somewhat free.
I found that the people were the most interesting part of the day. Not only would they feed the animals right next to "Don't feed the animals" sign, they would use the bathroom just like the animals. I'm not sure if I've talked about this before, but parents tend to let their kids go to the bathroom on the side of the streets, etc. Talk about convenience. They took that behavior to an extreme at the zoo. Our first encounter with it was a woman who was sitting on a park bench with her son in her lap. Very normal, until you look closer. The boys pants were pulled down to his ankles, the mother's legs were spread apart just enough so the child's toosh could fit between without falling through. On the ground was a plastic bag that clearly had "stuff" piled on top. I about threw up.
When I thought that couldn't be for real, I was sorely mistaken. Later, we saw another woman squatting in the grass next to the kangaroos. Her daughter, also between her legs in the same fashion, was going #1. Sick. Then I got to thinking to myself: they probably think we're disgusting by letting our children sit in their own waste until we get around to changing them. hmm....let's weigh the options: a clean, sanitary way to let our children relieve themselves, or public defocation...hmm, I think I'll stick to the diaper method.
Later that night we headed out for a Japanese all-you-can-eat restaurant. For about $20 a person, we got all we could eat of beef, chicken, pork, rice, noodles, sushi, fish, drinks, and anything else you can name. It was very tasty and so much fun. We were put in this small room by ourselves that had the table on the ground and pads to sit on, like real Japanese style. Fortunately for us, it only looked like we were going to have to sit Indian style for dinner because underneath the floor table was a place for our legs to hang. Whew! That would have been a long, stiff night otherwise. There were two grills in front of us that we cooked all our own food on. It was definitely a really neat experience and well worth our $20!
Well, if you've made it this far, congratulations!! I'm sorry I made you read so much! I just want to be sure I include it all. This blog is not only for you to know what's happening on the other side of the world, it's also to help me remember what we did. I have a horrible memory, so I'm going to have to rely on my blog and Matthew's memory (or steel trap, as I like to refer to it) to know what happened on this trip. I'm already having a hard time remembering what we girls have done during the day most days!! Ahh, old age is setting in....
Until next time, we love you and miss you!
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