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!
That's weird that blogspot is blocked from Shanghai. I wonder why. I love reading about your adventures and life in China, it's almost like being there myself! Thanks for keeping us all updated. Sherry, where in China is your family from? Do you get to see them very often now that you are over there?
ReplyDeleteit's good to know that you don't have to deal with ridiculously large classes this time around. And funny enough, I am not surprised at all about blogspot being blocked.
ReplyDeletegood luck with everything