Mom and Paul's visit

Other than the earthquake, we're having a good time with mom and Paul. They came back from Qingdao on the 8th and are leaving for home today. We'll miss them!

Let's see...what did we do... oh okay we had a full body massage, and everybody, especially John was so sore the next day. I guess they were too hard on us. We watched Iron Man in a nice theater and had a nice dinner afterwards. We went to the knock-off stores and mom bought John some North Face jackets, very nice ones. It's always fun to go into those stores.

If you (meaning you with foreign faces) walk on the busiest road, Nanjing Road in Shanghai, people would come to you and ask you "you wanna Rolex, Gucci, Addidas, NorthFace?". If you show any interest, they'd take you to one of those back allies and go into a store. After they make sure no cops are around, they'd open the hidden door on the wall and take you into their "real" business. They have all the knock-off products you could ever want. The bargaining is fun, too. For a two-piece Northface jacket, they'd ask for 600 US dollars. And you just shake your head, laugh, and tell them "ya kidding me?" then offer them 50 dollars. Usually you can get them for about 60 bucks. And they are actually very nice quality jackets. I mean who can tell a knock-off from a real one?

Paul also got some very nice Chinese paintings for a good bargain. Mom got some pearls, of course and she got me a pretty red coral necklace since I don't wear pearls all that much.

Yesterday after the earthquake episode, we went to the Shanghai Museum and had Beijing Duck for dinner. After climbing down 35 flights of stairs, we felt a need for a good foot massage, and so we did. It cost 10 bucks for the four of us to get an one-hour long foot massage. We felt better afterwards.

Here're some of our pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/OldTownTempleAndMotherSDay
http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/ShanghaiMuseumAndBeijingDuck