I know how to get to work and to the shopping malls with Coldstone and Beard Papas. I sort of like the way they do street signs here. Danny pointed out that they put the street plus the street one block in each direction on the signs. This is really useful because each block is ridiculously long, way longer than Avenues in Manhattan.
I found a few restaurants I'm ok with. I was really happy about Element Fresh. It has English speaking waiters, sells salad, sandwiches and pastas and delivers.
City Shop has all the imported groceries I need at incredibly high prices. They have McDonalds and KFC everywhere... too bad I don't eat them.
I got through the first two days of class. Work has some challenges but I think it will be ok.I had my physical for getting my work visa. My first experience of dealing with health care in China was sort of scary. They didn't speak that much English and put you through a series of medical tests without telling you what was going on. I got really freaked out when they gave me a needle because they didn't warn me at all and it didn't seem very clean there compared to the doctors at home. Danny is doing his physical right now while I'm sitting in his office writing this. Our internet at home is still really spotty. We finally set up google voice though so now people from home should be able to call me on my old cell phone number from the states. It is a 12 hour time difference though so flip am pm if you want to get in touch.
It still feels really busy and things haven't quite calmed down yet but we have finally had time to try a little bit of sightseeing. We went to West Nanjing Road, the Bund and got a nice view of the Oriental Pearl tower. West Nanjing Road is supposed to be the busiest shopping street in the world, it reminds me a lot of Times Square. Similarly I don't think I'll go there often. The Bund is next to Nanjing Road. It is the area where a bunch of Europeans invaded and built western style buildings.
We found a store near our place that sold Hello Kitty products exclusively. It was quite frightening.
Apparently in Shanghai for some reason they call bras "body pops". I'm not sure if it was just this store but I found it creepy. I may not be able to buy any underwear here ever. Good thing I'll be home in January.
Things here just don't seem as clean as at home. People seem to have different concepts of hygiene. They have a giant work force so they clean things often but it still just seems dirty.
They also seem to have different rules about zoning and construction. We went to this one store to buy a phone and when we got there we thought it was closed because it looked like it was under construction. The whole first floor was just covered in rubble but they had a working escalator and upstairs was a cell phone store. I'm scared of how may safety violations we walked through to go to the store. I guess we survived though so whatever.
I'm not sure if homelessness is as prevalent here as in the states but we see beggars occasionally. It is weird that they look cleaner than the ones at home. We also frequently see people just sitting down and charging their cell phones in the subway.
I'm starting to get a bit more of feel for the city. Locals here are really loud and pushy. I know New Yorkers have a bad reputation but here seems way more intense. People are still really nice though, if you talk to them when they aren't trying to commute. It is the weekend thankfully so I think soon I'll go out and try to explore the city a bit more. I'm ordering lunch from Element Fresh first.
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