Wednesday in Shanghai

Today is our first day with the tour! We are 5 families plus Snow, Tammy who runs the Beijing office, Grace who is a National Guide and Abby who is also from the Beijing office. In addition, there is a videographer Joe and a Shanghai guide Carol. There are 5 girls on the tour and on the way to their first bus ride they broke up into 2 groups: older and younger. Since we have a girl in each group we need to stay up with both groups.
We went to Yu Yuan and the girls spent most of the time feeding the fish.


Here is our entire group.














We're not the type that normally does well on a group tour. However as you can see below, it wasn't long until the girls were in charge of the day.











We stopped at the aquarium which was very nice and another chance for the girls to run around and play. All of the time on the bus going from one place to another the girls had the microphone were singing all of the songs they knew.

Dinner was at a restaurant where they showed the girls how to make zhongzhi which is a pastry eaten on the holiday today, the Dragon Boat Festival. Here is a photo of the girls making their pastrys of rice in leaves.











Last we went on a river cruise to see the night lights of Shanghai. The lights were quite amazing, too bad the battery in my camera went dead.

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Tuesday in Shanghai

Today was our last day on our own so we had to finish our last shopping expeditions. Tomorrow we start the group tour.

First we went to a market for kids clothes. There was lots of Barbie, Dora and Hello Kitty (we even saw some Happy Kitty, I guess that is not copywrited). We bought 8 pairs of socks (mostly pink), 5 pairs of tights, 12 pair of Barbie underwear, 1 shirt, 2 skirts, 2 dresses and 1 matching pant/shirt of Hello Kitty. Oh yes and 6 Hello Kitty barrettes, 2 stampers and 1 book to practice writing Chinese characters. It was a successful trip and the girls got lots of attention.


We had to go back to the hotel to drop off all of the things so the girls had their favorite lunch - KFC with mashed potatoes. It is close to the hotel and easy.










Next we stopped back at Xiang Yang market for a few last trinkets and then on to the Pearl store - you can never have too many pearls. The ladies who worked there just loved to play with the girls and when we come it, they take the girls to go and play and we don't see them again until we are ready to leave.











I went back to the Antique Market because I wanted to buy a Chinese Checkers game that I had seen earlier.


I ended up buying that and a Mah Jong set which comes in a nice chest and a game with the white and black circles - is it Tetris? Anyway all are Laquered with beautiful designs. All 3 are pictured here.





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Monday in Shanghai

Its a miracle - today Ji Ji's foot is all better! She is running and jumping and everywhere !

One of the first things I noticed when arriving on Friday was the white mist (smog) which kept us from seeing more than a half mile in any direction. We couldn't see the sky at all. On Saturday, when we woke up there was blue sky! On Sunday and today, we had half sky and some smog.

This morning we went to the Pearl TV Tower and took the elevator 259 meters up to the middle sphere. With the smog the visibility was just ok and the picture taking was not very clear. It was interesting to look around and see all of the construction and huge sections of the city which have been cleared for new construction. The city certainly is changing fast.



At the bottom of the tower there is the Shanghai Urban Development Museum. It was bigger than expected and it had lots of scenes set up like old Shanghai with wax figures and the girls liked that. They had one section like a miniature downtown Shanghai that you could walk through.






We took a detour to the Century Park which supposedly has the largest kids play area. Well, you need to pay to get in and then you need to pay for each ride, not cheap considering where we were. The girls liked the rides and wanted to play in the area with the slides - then another ex-pat Dad told Mark about the local boy who just went over to the slide area when he had to pee (couldn't walk 50 meters to the public toilet) so we decided the slides weren't a good idea. It seems the park looks more beautiful than it is functional.

The girls were very tired so they headed back to the hotel and I went to the Pearl store to pick up some items which were being made from the day before. Another 2 necklaces and matching bracelets jumped into my bag - all for $25.

Tonight we relax in the hotel and the girls hopefully get to bed early - though they do seem to get lots of cat naps throughout the day when we take taxis and it is hot and we are sitting in traffic - their eyes close and they do synchronous sleeping.

The longer we are here, the more it reminds us of Singapore, mostly in the way that it is developing. Many of the old buildings are being torn down and replaced by new buildings - the cloth / silk market is a good example of that. Some of the new buildings are being built in the old style but not all. It is a very interesting mix of old traditional buildings and new modern architecture.

Ji Ji loves attention and this is one place where she gets a lot as a cute Chinese girl with foreign parents. She uses her few words of Mandarin to talk to people all of the time and she loves when they smile. She will yell across the room Ni Hao when she sees someone smile at her and then when they try to speak to her in Chinese, she grins and says "I'm shy" - yeah right!

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Sunday in Shanghai

We woke up earlier today and surprise, Ji Ji couldn't walk! Her ankle was a little bit swollen up and it was black and blue just below the ankle. We think she must have twisted it last night when she fell off the curb and scrapped her knee. She was able to walk on it last night so it doesn't seem to be broken but today everywhere we went was with one of us carrying her. She screamed if anyone bumped into her foot or when we put on her shoe.

Given Ji Ji's inability to walk, we took it easy today. First we took a taxi to the site of the former clothing / silk market Dong Jia Du. Today there were people there handing out cards to taxi drivers and tourists telling them the new location of the market. We got to the market and walked around a bit. After much haggling, etc., Mark ordered 2 silk Chinese style shirts, Judy ordered 1 Chinese silk shirt and matching skirt and 2 cotton shirts for work, Nora and Ji Ji both ordered traditional Chinese dresses because the fabric was silk brocade in pink with multi color butterflies. We will pick up all of these items on Thursday as they will be made for us.


Here is Nora getting measured for her Chinese dress.

Next we took a taxi to the Fu You Antique Market, which isn't exactly located on Fu You Road, so the taxi driver actually dropped us off at a different market on Fu You Road. We were still moving slow because of Ji Ji's ankle so we walked around that market and I had an interesting episode taking Ji Ji to the bathroom in which I ended up with a wet shoe but that is the fun of squat toilets.

We next went to lunch again at Xintiandi complex and the restaurant was expensive but not very good. There is a museum in the complex which shows a traditional Shikumen or stone gate house which at one time was the popular house style around Shanghai for the Chinese residents.


After lunch we headed to the Xiang Yang Market, also known as the fakes market. At the first stall I bought Mark 2 Nike Cool Max shirts for less than US$10. From there it just went downhill because I kept throwing out low ball prices and we ended up with more stuff than we needed - I just couldn't stop!







Mark got a North Face snow jacket with a zip out inside polar tech lining. It was under $28 after much discussions. Both girls got a lot of attention at the market and Nora got a little bit more comfortable (or at least less sensitive) as she actually talked to some people asking her age and her name.






On the outside of the market was a good Pearl shop which had been recommended to us and we spent some money there. Each girl got a nice pearl necklace for when she is older. Of course I got a few items as well.

Last we had dinner at a very good Shanghainese restaurant which was recommended by an American woman living in here whom we met in the Pearl store. The food was great (Nora really liked it) and the price was very reasonable. We will probably stop by again this week.

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Saturday in Shanghai

Our first full day in Shanghai and we have a whole list of things that we wanted to do - however the entire family slept until 10:30 and missed breakfast and most of the morning. On the good side we are now acclimated to the time zone.

As soon as we could we headed to Yu Yuan, the gardens and bazaar. As it is a weekend it was just packed with people. We did some shopping in the bazaar and then went into the gardens. We will visit again on Wednesday with the tour but we wanted a chance to just wander by ourselves and take a lot of photos.


Commercialism is live and well in Yu Yuan. This is an area rebuilt to look like it did in the past, however you can still find KFC, Haagen Dasz and Starbucks.












The girls got their names written in pictures and they both got a snuff bottle with flowers painted on the inside with both their Chinese and American names painted inside.

We stopped at a market for pearls and I bought a few necklaces which were very reasonably priced, like $10 a piece or less.

In the late evening we headed to the Dong Jia Du clothing/silk market. The taxi driver didn't want to take us there and told us it was close so we should just walk. Well after walking for a long time, we ended up on the corner where it was supposed to be but the building was demolished. There was a sign saying that the market had moved but by that time we were just exhausted and caught a taxi to dinner.

Dinner was at a great Taiwanese dumpling restaurant which had been recommended to us by some friends at Nora's school in Germany. We now know that Nora loves dumpling - we kept calling her our dumpling monster.

After dinner, we went to the Bund and looked out over the river to Pu Dong and the beautiful architecture. Interestingly, there were the typical large neon advertising signs along the waterfront and we saw one for Abbott !

We walked along Nanjing Road and stopped in at several department stores. We saw a shopping store for kids and both girls got Hello Kitty tennis shoes.

At the end of the day we took the Metro back to our hotel. We walked all the way to the first car and it was not as crowded but as we got out we saw the other cars were all packed!


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Arrival on Friday

We arrived in Shanghai - yeah ! The flight was almost 10 hours, Mark and Ji Ji slept through most of it while Nora and I were awake. The Chinese Olympic soccer team was on our flight (U23) as they had been training in Europe and of course Mark was making friends with them throughout the flight.

Grace met us at the airport using the green GWCA flag which we first saw in 1999 when we arrived to get Nora. Grace is a national guide and works exclusively for Great Wall.


We went shopping for drinks and water at a small shop around the corner from our hotel and the girls already got lots of attention.











We took the subway and went to Dong Tai Lu Antique Market to walk around and start the bargaining process. I bought a nice set of carved, wooden chopsticks in a case with chopstick holders. The opening price was Y200 and I offered Y20 and as I was walking away I got them for Y35 or about $4.40. At the end I was wondering if I had paid too much but I am already getting too competitive as $1 here or there isn't going to matter that much. There were some nice leather Chinese checkers sets which I think the girls would actually play with but opening bids were about Y380 and the cheapest we were offered was Y255 but I wanted to see if I could get the price even lower. I insulted a few people by giving too low offers but as you can see by my first purchase, its hard to know how low is too low. We have a few more days here and I will keep my eyes out, eventually I will get a set and also a lacquered Mah Jong set, even if that ends up being for display only. Mark bought an Adidas back pack for Y35 - the man started at Y48 and we were both surprised that it started so low - but of course we still had to bargain and try to get it cheaper.




We found our first Starbucks on Huai Hai Dong Lu and had a nice rest. Say what you wish about American commercialism but there is always a comfortable place to rest with air conditioning and nice bathrooms. We bought a Shanghai Starbucks mug (I collect them) and we were laughing because it cost Y125 which seems outrageous after our morning of ultra tight bargaining but in hindsight it was under $16, no more than we would pay in any other city.


Nora was having a lot of fun walking around and at one point she said she LOVED China, that it was really cool!

We found the department stores on Huai Hai Dong Lu very expensive with their Osh Kosh kids clothes so we took the Metro (subway) back toward our hotel. The cars were crowded when we got in and Nora and I couldn't fit in the same car as Mark so we had to walk down a while to find a car we could squeeze into. Then as more people kept getting on we were getting pushed further into the middle of the car. At our station we had to push our way out and Nora got a little bit squeezed by a woman trying to push her way into the car as we were getting out. Nora then told me she wasn't sure she liked China as it was very squishy!

We did some more shopping at the department stores around our hotel and around the train station. The girls wanted some Hello Kitty stuff which we see everywhere so in the end we found a Hello Kitty store and they bought got umbrellas.

Everywhere we went the girls got lots of attention. Ji Ji loved it and she was putting on a show for everyone dancing but Nora hid behind one of us and kept saying that she didn't want everyone to look at her.

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Thursday we leave for China

No, its not the adoption trip to go and get the di di. We will be attending the Great Wall Homeland Reunion - 10 years since our agency started helping families to adopt from China.

We depart on Thursday night and arrive on Friday in Shanghai. We will have 5 days in Shanghai on our own and I have a list of sites to see and markets to visit. The only problem will be the limit on our luggage when we fly back.

On Wednesday, we will be joined by other GWCA families and we will go on a tour every day. On Saturday we will fly to Xian and spend 2 days there. On Monday evening, we fly back to Shanghai and Tuesday morning we depart for Germany.

I am taking my laptop and will try to blog from China. Wish us luck!

May Day in Trier and Luxembourg

Going back a few weekends, we visited our friends in Trier and drove into Luxembourg over the long May Day holiday.

Here are some photos of the Porta Negra in Trier. The girls rode their bikes through the pedestrian area.










Below are some photos from Luxembourg.

Ji Ji's 5th Birthday Party

On Sunday was Ji Ji's Birthday party for her classmates. The party was held at a kids play area in Mainz, Kinderspieloase.



Of course it was a Dora the Explorer party. As always, Mark makes the cakes and I stay up to the middle of the night to decorate them.







Here are Ji Ji and Nora on the trampolines.









All the kids took a break from playing to eat their lunch. Ji Ji liked the Dora balloon which was almost as big as she was.






As always, Mark is in charge of organizing the kids.









There is a big bouncy crocodile and the bottom of the mouth will close with the girls inside. This is a big hit at the parties.









Ji Ji played on all toys, big and small.










Ji Ji finishing her birthday cake.










Mark took the kids to get their slush drinks after the birthday cake.








Ji Ji opened presents and thanked each of the kids.









At the end of the party, the girls were tired! Look at the bottom or Ji Ji's feet. They had fun.









The family, exhausted after the party but we had a great time.

Nora at Camporee

Nora and Mommy spent all day Saturday at a Girl Scout camp on a US military base. Nora is in a brownie troop which is an after school activity at her school.


Here is troop 161. Nora is in the middle wearing a demin hat.








There were games and activities. Here is Nora playing frisbee toss.






Also at the Camporee it was Thinking Day which had been cancelled earlier because of snow. Each troop picks 1 country and then tells the other troops some interesting things about it. Nora's troop picked Switzerland (did you know Switzerland is 1 of 2 countries which has a square flag!) Nora is holding the flag.


The girls chose an activity for the afternoon and Nora chose arts and crafts. She colored a cloth bag with permanent markers and then they put some rubbing alcohol on the color and it ran a littlle, giving and interesting effect. They also got bandanas which some of the girls colored with grass and dandelions but that was too dirty for Nora so she took it home and used markers to color it properly.


Here is Nora carving soap with a plastic knife. She learned knife safety.








There was a 2 hour bus ride both ways so of course there was lots of activity on the bus - playing, eating, singing, switching seats, etc.