Day 2 -- No Habla Mandarin

Shanghai Day 2

So much for sleeping in! We woke up a little before 5 am thanks to the jet lag. Tommy watched the Aggie game on the computer while I tried to get our room organized. We met our coworkers for breakfast at the hotel, which is known for having a lavish, American-style buffet. It was good, but I wouldn't necessarily call it American.

A quick note about the area where our hotel is located -- it is called Jin Qiao, and it is one of the main expat communities. Most of the big (expensive) international schools are here, and there are wide sidewalks, gorgeous compounds, and lost of families. It's not cheap, but it's comfortable. Mostly Americans, Europeans, and Australians here.

We headed out for the day, stopping first at Starbucks and then at the import grocery store to check out prices. $14 for a box of Honey Nut Cheerios! The next stop was Carrefour, the large French store that is most like a Super Wal Mart only louder, more crowded, and mostly in Chinese. The goal was to get our SIM cards registered so that we could use our phones here, but we decided to look around to see what was available. Again, I was surprised at the amount of English I saw on the packaging. I was able to find Tide, Pampers, Pantene, Skippy, and even Tostitos (for $9 a bag, but still.) I swooned over a package of imported Mint Milanos, which at $12 a bag, will probably be my Valentine's Day present.

We also saw the produce market, and the butchery, because I wanted to check out the options for chicken. Let's just say this -- there is no Sanderson Farms. There is a case of dead, feathered chickens -- head, feet, and all, just laying there. But if you don't want that, you can buy the chicken in a package. With the head peering up at you from under the shrink wrap. Hope John and Betsy like tofu.

After Carrefour, we got a taxi over to Thumb Plaza, a popular restaurant/shopping area in Century Park, which is another area popular with expats. This area is much more urban, with more shops and high-rises and a lot more people. It is still Western (there's a Pizza Hut, a KFC, Subway, etc.) but also has a lot of non-European expats. We really liked it -- there were kids everywhere, and we even found this great children's technology center that offers Lego engineering classes for 3-7 year olds. We almost signed John up on the spot!

Most of the NI expats live in Century Park, and we strolled around the grounds of one compound before catching the subway over to Luijazui, which is the financial district of Pudong. If you've seen a picture of "modern" Shanghai with all the skyscrapers, that's what you've seen. I couldn't even comprehend how tall these buildings were, even as I was standing there looking at them. We went into SuperBrand Mall, one of many, many malls. We had lunch in one of the restaurants inside, overlooking the Bund and the river.

As we walked around, every time someone spoke to me in Mandarin (or Shanghainese, the local dialect) I had to fight my natural inclination to respond with "Si" or "Gracias." I've heard that when you hear a foreign language, the part of your brain that knows other languages defaults to the one you know best. So we spent most of the afternoon laughing about my chances of saying "No habla Mandarin!" one of these days.

We thought we might go across the river into Puxi, the "real" Shanghai (Pudong, where we are, is the newer area developed in the last 10-20 years), but the ferry was closed and we were pretty tired and cold, so we got a taxi back to Century Park and decided to get a massage. It was heavenly. And cheap. Really, really cheap -- we paid a total of $20 for both of us to get 90 minute massages.

Then we walked BACK to Thumb Plaza for some Starbucks, trying to stay awake until dinner. Ultimately, we chose sleep over dinner, and came back to the hotel to crash. Monday will be our first day at the office.