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When we arrived in Shanghai, China it was a big move for myself and my family. It helped alot to be able to write down our experiences and e-mail them to our friends and family. They all gave us a lot of much needed support during that time. After a few months of "adjustment", it became commonplace for me to write updates. Here is an arichive of e-mails sent before creating this website and updates after the website was created.
Family Photo Album:
E-mail to our Friends and Family 1/17/07
Hello Everyone,
It’s me again!!
A huge problem is developing on the home front. Scott has officially lost a belt size and I’ve gained 5 pounds! (This took some research since our scale is in Kg but it’s probably correct). Do you think it’s the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread, or the beer? I think the last time I had white bread was in Ohio growing up. I can only find wheat bread in one store and I’m not even sure it’s wheat much less 100% whole wheat! It’s probably just white with brown food coloring to please the Americans. This would explain my 5 pounds. Don’t get me wrong our dinners are very good and healthy it’s just the other meals that are causing the problems. I can’t find whole grain anything! Enough about me.
Sophie and I once again ventured out to unknown territory this week. We went shopping at the much anticipated IKEA in the middle of the week and it was packed. We walk in the store and the first thing Sophie wants is food, of course, so we go upstairs to this cafeteria. The food is mostly Chinese with an American flair. I tried the Swedish Meatballs and French Fries and only ate 3 meatballs. I should have stuck with the Chinese food. Sophie had spaghetti and ate the whole thing wanting more when she was done. It was interesting watching the Chinese eat French fries with a fork. Probably the same way they watch me eating with chopsticks, which by the way, we’re all getting pretty good at. We’ve enacted the “chopsticks at dinner” rule and it’s getting easier every night. Every store here is 2-3 stories high to save land and before IKEA, we could just take our carts up this ramp escalator and shop from floor to floor. In order the get from one floor to another in IKEA we had to leave our full cart on the ground floor and take a bag up to the next floor. This took about an hour to figure out. Sophie kept saying “all we need to do is find an American! She might not speak English but we need to find an American!”. It was pretty funny. Then she blurted out in the middle of nowhere how much she misses her house and her friend Ella and started to cry. I told her I missed my friends too but that didn’t help her much. Man, I need to get her some friends!!
Pizza Hut was another experience to remember. We took the kids there over the weekend to get them some American food. The menu is totally different than ours and the restaurant was a lot more fancy. But, the main attraction was the salad bar. We walked in and noticed this lady making a salad and didn’t think much of it. We ordered one trip salads and pizza. I got all excited because I saw a picture of onion rings and found out it was fried squid. Yuk! Anyway, we went to the salad bar, ate our salads and pizza and beer for me (beer is the same price as a coke here and since you can’t drink the water why not have a beer?) Actually, beer is even a lot cheaper than a bottled water in a restaurant. Ok, where was I? Oh yeah, the salad bar by the time we had finished eating this lady had built a fortress about 12 inches high above her plate of salad and she was still going. Her kids kept coming up to her because they were hungry and she kept building this salad. The point is the Chinese like to take advantage of a good deal. One trip salad converts to a challenge to see how much salad they can get for $3.50? We heard about this in our cultural training session but I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a true art that we certainly would not have the patience for.
That same day we found an international store that sold a lot of our products, but way too expensive. I guess if I get really hard pressed I’ll spend the money. The prices are double and triple what they are in the U.S. Example, box of cereal is $6.00, little bottle of syrup (I mean little) is $10.00, cake mix $3.00 but I bought that! After that we went to Scott’s office and played ping pong for the rest of the afternoon. Sophie is quite the ping pong player. Scott wants to put a ping pong table in our living room, I think not! We took cabs the whole time to give our driver a day off which is not a problem. The only thing is that the kids have been without car seats for 3 weeks. They are in our shipment which has not arrived due to problems in the U.S. In China it is not required and I can’t find them in any stores I’ve visited.
Scott and I are going out tonight with his boss from Mooresville to my favorite Thai restaurant. Anyway, it should be interesting to see how the kids get along with Ayi since neither of them can understand each other. I’m going to have some basic instructions translated but she’s pretty much on her own. Sean is getting extremely spoiled with her here. Every time he wants something he says “why don’t we have Ayi do it”. They have Ayi’s at school too so he sees them all day long. I don’t think they’re treated very well compared to our standards. But, Ayi loves the kids. After dinner we sit around the table (waiting for Sean to finish) and she joins us and just smiles at them. Just wait until she can understand what they’re saying, she’ll probably go home early!
Sophie and I watched Happy Feet today. We got it for $1.00. You gotta love it!!
Have a great day!
Jennifer Jenkins