touristing and things

Ok, so I already mentioned that Shannon and I went to the Bund and took pictures of Pudong on Saturday afternoon. It was really nice, even though it was super cloudy. Not that that's anything new...it's always a surprise when the sun is actually out. I'm never quite sure if it's clouds or smog...

Anyway, so we got off the metro at Raffles City, which is a huge huge mall. I'm sure the Mall of America is bigger, but this mall is intense. They have a Levis store and L'occitanne (I probably spelled that wrong) and whole bunch of other western stores, and the 6th floor has this crazy food court type place called Megabite. It's like an American food court at a mall, except it's all different types of Chinese or Japanese food, and you have to put money on a debit card in order to purchase anything. Shannon and I had a pretty good dinner there for about $3.

Anyway, so we walked out of Raffles City down Fuzhou (pronounced Fujo) Lu. We stopped in Foreign Language Bookstore and admired all of the American novels and other books that we wanted to read. We're going to share our books with each other cause the books at the store are pretty expensive. From there we just walked all the way down Fuzhou Lu to the Bund. We had to take a tunnel to walk under the road there in order to get to the touristy park that allows you to walk along the rive and get good shots of Pudong. It was pretty crowded, especially with annoying vendors who kept trying to sell us kites. I threw a few "bu yao"s in their direction and that got them to leave us alone. Good thing the only useful Chinese I know I learned before I started taking lessons.

So, we took a bunch of pictures of Pudong and other monuments along the river. Here are a couple:
So the first one is of Pudong. The next is sort of of the Bund...you can see the Peace Hotel in the background with the green roof. And, of course, Shannon and I with the Chairman himself. Pretty awesome, huh.

So saturday night we took it easy. I watched some pirated dvds and much to my dismay, disc three of the first season of LOST doesn't work. Dammit. I'm thinking of taking it back to the dvd store but I don't really know how that works here...

Sunday was spent doing some lesson planning and watching Michigan kick Notre Dame's ass at a bbq place. It was an alright time, but I already knew the outcome of the game so it was sort of anticlimactic. Plus...it made me miss being in Ann Arbor surrounded by my fellow Wolverines.

I can't believe Tuesday is already over. I've officially been in China for one month. I can't believe how fast the first month has gone by. I'm sure it will start to go more slowly as soon as things stop being so new, but right now it's just flying by.

I guess the exciting news is that Shannon and I are almost definitely going to Xian for 4 days/3 nights during the October holiday in 2 weeks. She talked to a bunch of travel agents and we're almost totally committed to one package a guy put together for us...but if it doesn't work out, she just told me about a package she found on a Shanghai expat website to go to Malaysia for 5 days. So...we will be traveling! I can't wait!

Now it's off to our favorite Tuesday night dinner spot...some random street i don't know the name of in Gubei. All I care about is that it's not Chinese food....which is getting old already. Eek!