Shanghai Street Scenes

After our Chinese and Teaching classes we left for an excursion to the foreign bookstore.  We weren't that interested in the bookstore itself, but we were interested in getting there - riding the subway and seeing the sights.  The teachers here helped us figure out how to buy subway tickets by walking us down to the station and figuring out what buttons to press - all automated and with English menus, if you choose the easy way out (we did!)

Here are a couple of girls who were adopted by other students in our classes - cuties!

 

Hundreds of bicycles of all types are parked outside of the subway station.  I would hate to get back early and have to pluck mine out of the middle of this tangle!

Whew!  we got tickets and actually got on the subway in the right direction.  The train moved quickly, but amazingly Jack was the only one affected by the acceleration!

Just in case the thought occurred to you, no spitting is allowed in the subway station.  I love the graphic!

 

We finally emerged from the subway after all of our spitting was done, to a beautiful blue sky, pollution free day!  It was very warm and humid out, and this old woman was keeping herself cool.  She definitely had the right idea. 

This picture below was taken while crossing an intersection.  Normally I would never do something so bold as to pull out a camera in the middle of a Shanghai intersection!  It takes a lot of concentration to get across the street without getting flattened, but in the crush of humanity around us I felt relatively safe.  You can see the back of Sue and Peter in this pic ahead of me.

  And here we are back on the sidewalk safe and sound - however a motorbike did blow by us on the sidewalk as we proceeded towards the bookstore.  Crazy!

Jack agreed to show us proper squatting technique in the Chinese style toilets - it really builds up those quads!

 

Another word about intersections - once you make it through all of the cars you're not there yet, you still have to negotiate your way through all of the bicycles and many times you just have to put your head down and go for it, we've found.  The boys and I always feel like we're playing "Chicken" and say "bock, bock, bock" as we try to see whose will breaks first; ours or the oncoming traffic.

The subway station near our University in Shanghai, off of Yangchang Road.

This is the nice boulevard outside of our hotel.  One walks EVERYWHERE here so once we get to this section we are ready to get to our room and rest.

Sue and Jack broke off tonight to go buy some new shoes for Jack.  He found some he liked very well, and then they bought us dinner on the street of noodles and veggies, for about $.50 per person.  This was the first meal that Sue bought instead of me - Yeah Sue!

Sophie has a small cold so we will be going to bed early tonight!  Everyone else is doing great and we have mostly adjusted to the new time zone.  I've been very proud of Peter and Jack as they have adjusted to the new time zone, schedule, language, and nanny situation.  They have gone to the adult Chinese language courses with us and they are doing just as well as the college educated adults that are there!