Day 1 and 2 in Shanghai

Jet lag, jet lag, jet lag!  That is the name of the game at this point.  But each day is getting a little easier.  After sleeping only 2-3 hours on the flight over here we went to bed at 8 PM Shanghai time and woke up at 4 AM on Monday.  Last night (Tuesday) was a little better.  Bryson slept from 5 PM to 4 AM, Carina 7 PM to 4 AM and Brian and I, 8 PM to 4-5 AM.  Tonight we kept the kids up by swimming and having dinner at the pool.  The kids passed out in their beds before I could even read them a book at 7:30 PM.  We will see what time we all wake up tomorrow morning.

The benefit of waking up so early has been time to prep our "stuff" for Wen, our Ayi, to put away while we are gone during the day.  She is amazing!  She is considered a child care Ayi, but also cleans, shops, cooks and basically spoils us!  It is different having someone in the house all of the time who we really can't communicate with at all, but it is still a great pleasure and will get easier with time.  She is Chinese and speaks Mandarin.   She is with us for 10 hours a day on weekdays and 6 hours on the weekend.  The cost is only $450 a month for 13 months.  This is a good salary for Chinese women.   She worked with a Canadian family for seven years before our arrival.

Wen and Bryson on Monday morning.  Chinese people do not smile in pictures like we do!  Too bad her eyes are closed, otherwise it is pretty cute!

Beginning tomorrow she will have the kids all day until they start school on August 15th.  I hope that the kids do okay.  Bryson has really taken to her but Carina is pretty cautious still.  She was crying when we arrived home on Monday and today was at the school all day.  We will see how tomorrow goes.  I tried to convince Carina that she really doesn't want to come with us to our crazy medical exams tomorrow anyway.  It's so hard to leave her so sad but I know that she will make it!  We have made some friends with kids but it's not easy to arrange play dates with the ayi's yet, we are working on that too!

Our apartment is luxurious and spacious.  We have three bedrooms and two and a half baths.  The compound is beautiful with lakes, pools, playgrounds, and landscaping throughout.  The outlets have international access and the closets are huge.  I will post more pictures of the apartment after I get a chance to take some during the daylight hours. Today we went to the club for the first time and swam with some friends at the "beach pool."  Yes, it has a sandy beach with sand in one end of the water.  We ordered food and drinks at the pool bar too.  Talk about living at a resort!!  NICE!  We  need to officially get our membership to the club soon but just walked in today as we herd is often a possibility.  Again, this task will probably take us some time.

                                                                                   

Our laundry room and water cooler/warmer.  This is the one thing Wen asked us to buy besides a rice cooker.  The Chinese people use the hot water for noodles and cold to drink. I even have one in my classroom, they are everywhere.  The water only cost us 32 RMB (about $6) for 2 bottles delivered.  Yum!

                                      Our kitchen                                                              Bryson's room

   Carina's room                                                           half bath

The dining room with a window to the kitchen

 

                                                                   The family room

                             Our bedroom                    Master bathroom, there is a shower behind the door.

Our closets are huge and everywhere.  There is so much storage.

The amazing view from our balcony!

*Note:  These pictures were taken before our trip to Ikea.  LOL  I will have to post more after that!

We do not have cell phone coverage yet after two tries....but that is to be expected as everything is so "foreign" to us at this point.  The returning teachers will start to arrive in Shanghai later this week which will be a great help.  Our friend Branch (we met at AOSR in Rome) will help us out but we would love to have cell phones now!  We want to be able to call each other and our Ayi to check on the kids.  We are so reliant on cell phones these days.  Oh well, it's all a part of the experience!

Yesterday we had breakfast at a local restaurant, took a tour of the immediate area and went shopping at some "Mega Stores."  On the five minute walk from our compound to school we have many western possibilities such as Starbucks, Subway and Papa Johns.  Plus everywhere in China delivers.  That includes groceries. We bought bikes for the family, a wireless router, some garbage cans etc.  We have a trip to Ikea on Thursday to stock up on many other things that we need like comforters, bath mats and laundry baskets.

This is the awesome bus that we have been taken around in so far.  Notice the blue skies in the background.  We must have brought the great CO weather with us.  Everyone here is in awe of the weather and skies this week.  There are four new families here from CO this year.  Crazy!

Today we had breakfast at the school, toured the school, had some technology training and classroom time.  The school is beautiful and enormous.  We will have over 3000 students on our campus this year.  Then we went swimming with some other newbies and their kids.  One man is the high school principal and he was remarking how wonderful it was to be swimming with his family at 6 PM.  In the US he would not have been able to do that a couple of weeks before school started!  After the kids passed out tonight Brian rode his bike down to a local grocer that carries a lot of international food to start to fill our refrigerator.  We have eaten dinner out the last two nights.  Wen has bought us some fruit, a rice cooker and water cooler/warmers (for herself mostly) and a few other things. We are going to try to ask Wen tomorrow to make dinner for us on Thursday and see how that goes.  We hope to send one of us with Wen to a bigger store this weekend to show her what we like to eat so she can do more of the shopping.

Tomorrow brings Chinese culture and language classes as well as a lengthy medical exam which will allow us to get our work visas.

More coming soon, but it is 10 PM and I am exhausted!

Good night!