Has the weather here made the news much over there? Currently we have over 2 million stranded passengers who were on their way home for spring festival, and thats just in Guangzhou. A couple days ago there were 400 thousand in Shanghai. They are mostly migrant workers who have no where to stay here while their job sites are closed for the holiday. The government has opened schools as shelters and is providing basic food and health care. Everyone is being encouraged to just get a refund for their train tickets, but a lot of people refuse to give up on going home for the holiday. For people like the migrant workers, this is the only time they are able to see their families all year. Here in Shanghai we got about 1-2 inces of slush. It didn't cause too much trouble in Shanghai. The biggest problems were further south where they had ice storms that destroyed power grids that supported the train systems. I haven't heard many details, but there are a lot of people in some southern provinces that have been without electricity for days, and will continue to be without it for at least a few more. It has been over 50 years since Southern China had a snow storm that was anything like this. The numbers they report are so huge its hard to keep track of. So many peoples houses have collapsed due to the weight of the snow and ice, and the damage estimate just keeps climbing.
In spite of all this we are going to be traveling to Sherry's home. We are flying out Wednesday the 6th at 10am. We're headed north into the sunshine. The weather is supposed to calm down a couple of days before we leave and its supposed to be sunny the day we fly out.
In other news, Sherry is working hard teaching classes during the busy season of the winter holiday. We didn't know enough about the situation and didn't talk to the right people soon enough to be able to arrange for me to have classes for winter break. I have been once again reminded that no matter were you are business men are business men, and no matter what they would like you to think they are taking care of themselves...so we have do to the same.
I uploaded a few pictures from our first month here. http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/FirstMonthInChina
爱上我的家
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Our Address
I finally remembered to get our zip code today. So for those who's been asking, here it is.
John and Sherry Carr
Building 1, Room 2606, Lane 270, Yutian Rd,
Hongkou District, Shanghai, China 200092
上海市虹口区玉田路２７０弄１号楼２６０６室 ２０００９２
If your computer displays Chinese, you can print the Chinese address off. If not, I'm pretty sure mail will get here with just an English address.
As winter break approaches, we will get busier, lots of classes to teach and lots of English corners to host. One cool thing is our school is in a huge skyscraper on the most famous street in Shanghai. It's called the Nanjing Road Walking Street, close to the Bund, if you know what that is. There are numerous shops on both sides of the street, old fashioned and modern ones. Lots of restaurants as well. We just discovered Burger King the other day. We also found an American store called City Market. They provide all kinds of expensive American grocery, even chips and salsa. We have to check it out soon.
For some reason John's been having a hard time falling asleep. He's never tired any more. He said that's because he's not exercising enough and work does not require physical labor. We'll have to find him a 24 fitness, or rather a martial art master soon so he could get some work-out.
We are getting more and more situated. We miss all of you and think about you all the time.
John and Sherry Carr
Building 1, Room 2606, Lane 270, Yutian Rd,
Hongkou District, Shanghai, China 200092
上海市虹口区玉田路２７０弄１号楼２６０６室 ２０００９２
If your computer displays Chinese, you can print the Chinese address off. If not, I'm pretty sure mail will get here with just an English address.
As winter break approaches, we will get busier, lots of classes to teach and lots of English corners to host. One cool thing is our school is in a huge skyscraper on the most famous street in Shanghai. It's called the Nanjing Road Walking Street, close to the Bund, if you know what that is. There are numerous shops on both sides of the street, old fashioned and modern ones. Lots of restaurants as well. We just discovered Burger King the other day. We also found an American store called City Market. They provide all kinds of expensive American grocery, even chips and salsa. We have to check it out soon.
For some reason John's been having a hard time falling asleep. He's never tired any more. He said that's because he's not exercising enough and work does not require physical labor. We'll have to find him a 24 fitness, or rather a martial art master soon so he could get some work-out.
We are getting more and more situated. We miss all of you and think about you all the time.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Life in Shanghai...
So we found out we could not get to our blog in Shanghai. Anything that's from blogspot.com is blocked. John has to find a way to go around it. Very not cool!
Anyway, because of that and hunting an apartment and figuring out our work schedule, we didn't have time to update our blog. Thank you for those who're concerned about us and tried to make sure we were still alive. Here's the update.
We found an apartment that's 106 square meters (you can figure out the footage), with two bedrooms, one living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. We love it because of its nice location. It's close to the subway stations and bus stops, about 5 or 6 stops to work (instead of 40!!). There's a big shopping center (Carrefour for those who know about it) next to us, with a KFC in it! There are many little restaurants and convenience stores, even a McDonald that delivers!! The apartment is well furnished. All we need now are some rugs for the bathroom floor. People don't have carpets or area rugs inＣｈｉｎa so it's hard to find any. We've been going to evening markets and no luck so far. We made it our goal to get one tomorrow during our lesson planning break.
We finally talked to the right person in the school today about our work schedules. Both of us will start teaching next week. I'll be teaching TOEFL speaking, listening, and writing. John will only be teaching speaking classes until the foreign teacher coordinator gets back from Beijing next week and assign him more classes. We both teach VIP classes, which is one teacher to one student, or five, or twenty. We like it better than the classes with 400 students.
Things are expensive here in Shanghai, no more expensive than the States but definitely more than other cities in China. We found our money going away faster than we thought it would. The so-called foreign products are especially expensive, such as cheese, butter, peanut butter & jelly, banana bread (which is crappy btw), etc. John's been trying to find real milk among hundreds of different brands. So far only one kind is close to real milk, according to him. I, on the other hand, am happy that I don't have to drink the 2% any more. To me, all the brands except those John likes are "real milk".
We've been on straight Chinese diet since we got here, except the KFC we had last night. I feel John's starving all the time and I'm losing lots of weight :-) But he said he's fine. So we'll see how much weight he loses, say in a month?!
We did find a nice massage place close to our apartment the other night and had a full body massage for a hour for 7 dollars. We didn't go for the cheap cheap stores because we would see a dozen half-naked girls waiting around in the stores. So we decided to pay more and be safe :-)
We've been to some tourist places in Shanghai, but it's been foggy since we got here, so we couldn't get great pictures. We'll have to go back again when it clears up and upload some pictures. We are glad to find out that we live close to many tourist places, even the famous Pearl Tower. We are still exploring the city...
We want all of you to know that we do miss you all, a lot. We love China, but we love America, too! We may be stressed at times, but most time we are happy. The Lord does watches over us!
We send you our love!
Anyway, because of that and hunting an apartment and figuring out our work schedule, we didn't have time to update our blog. Thank you for those who're concerned about us and tried to make sure we were still alive. Here's the update.
We found an apartment that's 106 square meters (you can figure out the footage), with two bedrooms, one living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. We love it because of its nice location. It's close to the subway stations and bus stops, about 5 or 6 stops to work (instead of 40!!). There's a big shopping center (Carrefour for those who know about it) next to us, with a KFC in it! There are many little restaurants and convenience stores, even a McDonald that delivers!! The apartment is well furnished. All we need now are some rugs for the bathroom floor. People don't have carpets or area rugs inＣｈｉｎa so it's hard to find any. We've been going to evening markets and no luck so far. We made it our goal to get one tomorrow during our lesson planning break.
We finally talked to the right person in the school today about our work schedules. Both of us will start teaching next week. I'll be teaching TOEFL speaking, listening, and writing. John will only be teaching speaking classes until the foreign teacher coordinator gets back from Beijing next week and assign him more classes. We both teach VIP classes, which is one teacher to one student, or five, or twenty. We like it better than the classes with 400 students.
Things are expensive here in Shanghai, no more expensive than the States but definitely more than other cities in China. We found our money going away faster than we thought it would. The so-called foreign products are especially expensive, such as cheese, butter, peanut butter & jelly, banana bread (which is crappy btw), etc. John's been trying to find real milk among hundreds of different brands. So far only one kind is close to real milk, according to him. I, on the other hand, am happy that I don't have to drink the 2% any more. To me, all the brands except those John likes are "real milk".
We've been on straight Chinese diet since we got here, except the KFC we had last night. I feel John's starving all the time and I'm losing lots of weight :-) But he said he's fine. So we'll see how much weight he loses, say in a month?!
We did find a nice massage place close to our apartment the other night and had a full body massage for a hour for 7 dollars. We didn't go for the cheap cheap stores because we would see a dozen half-naked girls waiting around in the stores. So we decided to pay more and be safe :-)
We've been to some tourist places in Shanghai, but it's been foggy since we got here, so we couldn't get great pictures. We'll have to go back again when it clears up and upload some pictures. We are glad to find out that we live close to many tourist places, even the famous Pearl Tower. We are still exploring the city...
We want all of you to know that we do miss you all, a lot. We love China, but we love America, too! We may be stressed at times, but most time we are happy. The Lord does watches over us!
We send you our love!
Friday, January 4, 2008
21 Hours of Pure Joy...
I'm back!
The second I got in the cab I knew I was back in China. I've never taken a cab in the states so I don't know about the, but here they all have a certain odor that you just can't get anywhere else. Something like stale cigarettes, and bad breath covered up by the same air freshener. Its really not that bad, just unique enough that it brought back a lot of memories of the last time I was here.
We left the hotel in Las Vegas at 4am on Jan 3rd. For the next 21 hours we chased the sun across the sky. Finally arriving in Shanghai at about 4pm Jan 4th (local time).
I love flying, but appearantly the airports don't love me. As has happened to me every time I've flown post 9-11 I was "randomly" chosen to go though extra security. Poor Sherry didn't know what she was getting when she married me. I did convince the TSA guy to tell me why I get to be the lucky guy every time. For some reason the airlines have me and anyone that flys with me on the non existent "no fly" list. He couldn't tell me why, but said I should write my senator because airlines were supposed to turn that stuff over to the TSA a long time ago, but haven't.
We had a great flight from LV to Vancouver. In fact it was probably the best flight of my life. The nice lady at check in managed to get my a seat in the emergency exit row. I had more leg room than I could use! It was like first class. The plane was state-of-the-art. It had an outlet for everyone, as well as a personal mutimedia system on the back of every seat. You could watch any of a few dozen movies, TV shows, News, or listen to music. I decided to sleep, and save th emovie watching for the second, longer, flight.
The flight from Vancouver to Shanghai, was no so cool. The plane was old school, and she couldn't manage me an exit row seat for that flight. The in flight movie was projected on a main screen, and it must have been from an old VCR, because the tracking was off. Sherry didn't care, she was asleep most of the flight. I did finally get to finish the Harry Potter series though, so it wasn't that bad. It was about time that I found out how those kids got killed off :P
Once we got to Shanghai we picked up our luggage with no problem and took a cab to our hotel. We got lucky and arrived durring rush hour. Only 3 buses tried to run us off the road, so I consider it fairly uneventful. It took us 2 hours to get across town, the driver said it usually takes about 40 mins. There weren't any accidents, just lots and lots of crazy drivers.
The hotel is great, infact its better than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. For half as much as we paid in LV (and we got a great deal to get that price) we have a cleaner room with free internet and breakfast for a buck.
That was our travel experiance. All in all pretty good.
The second I got in the cab I knew I was back in China. I've never taken a cab in the states so I don't know about the, but here they all have a certain odor that you just can't get anywhere else. Something like stale cigarettes, and bad breath covered up by the same air freshener. Its really not that bad, just unique enough that it brought back a lot of memories of the last time I was here.
We left the hotel in Las Vegas at 4am on Jan 3rd. For the next 21 hours we chased the sun across the sky. Finally arriving in Shanghai at about 4pm Jan 4th (local time).
I love flying, but appearantly the airports don't love me. As has happened to me every time I've flown post 9-11 I was "randomly" chosen to go though extra security. Poor Sherry didn't know what she was getting when she married me. I did convince the TSA guy to tell me why I get to be the lucky guy every time. For some reason the airlines have me and anyone that flys with me on the non existent "no fly" list. He couldn't tell me why, but said I should write my senator because airlines were supposed to turn that stuff over to the TSA a long time ago, but haven't.
We had a great flight from LV to Vancouver. In fact it was probably the best flight of my life. The nice lady at check in managed to get my a seat in the emergency exit row. I had more leg room than I could use! It was like first class. The plane was state-of-the-art. It had an outlet for everyone, as well as a personal mutimedia system on the back of every seat. You could watch any of a few dozen movies, TV shows, News, or listen to music. I decided to sleep, and save th emovie watching for the second, longer, flight.
The flight from Vancouver to Shanghai, was no so cool. The plane was old school, and she couldn't manage me an exit row seat for that flight. The in flight movie was projected on a main screen, and it must have been from an old VCR, because the tracking was off. Sherry didn't care, she was asleep most of the flight. I did finally get to finish the Harry Potter series though, so it wasn't that bad. It was about time that I found out how those kids got killed off :P
Once we got to Shanghai we picked up our luggage with no problem and took a cab to our hotel. We got lucky and arrived durring rush hour. Only 3 buses tried to run us off the road, so I consider it fairly uneventful. It took us 2 hours to get across town, the driver said it usually takes about 40 mins. There weren't any accidents, just lots and lots of crazy drivers.
The hotel is great, infact its better than the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. For half as much as we paid in LV (and we got a great deal to get that price) we have a cleaner room with free internet and breakfast for a buck.
That was our travel experiance. All in all pretty good.
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