And the crazy fireworks!!

So it all begins...

Today is Monday morning Feb 9th. This is our fourth day in Shanghai. After arriving late Thursday night, we explored our apartment a bit, had a cup of tea (thanks Lisa for the tea!) and easily went to sleep. We of course woke up at about 4 am wide awake – but got several hours of good sleep.

Friday morning we had breakfast downstairs (did I mention there's continental breakfast every day?!) and then our driver picked us up. After a 30 minute drive (we didn’t hit bad traffic - yay!) to Pudong (the newer side of the city on the other side of the river) we arrived at JinMao which is one of the tallest buildings in the city, to attend an orientation session at one of the three GM headquarters in the city. We had lunch at Pizza Hut in a giant shopping mall overlooking the Bund. (The Bund is the oldest part of Shanghai -which is on the other side of the river in PuXi where we live. The Bund is a famous area that is often shown in reference to Shanghai – most people would probably recognize it – with it’s clock tower and old buildings right on the riverbank.) Pizza Hut was yummy – it’s very different here – a much more upscale dining experience. The menu is larger and much more diverse – food is good though. They serve some really interesting “pizza” – they like to put funky things in the crust. I took a picture of a menu special - you can see it with my pics.

After lunch we headed to the bank to deposit some money into our new Chinese bank account (that GM set up for us). Checks do not exist here so we received one debit card with an account logbook. We asked if we could have another card and were told “no” – only one card per account. If we wanted another card we’d have to open another account. Okay, fine. So we realize this will mostly be a cash account. We just needed to put money in to get it started. So we have a check for our escrow refund that we need to deposit. After much debate and showing our passports, they finally tell us they can do it, but that it will take two months before the money is available for withdrawal (they freeze that amount in our acct to make sure the check clears). Also it will cost us 140 RMB (about $20 US) to deposit this check. WHAT?! Apparently cash deposits are free, but they charge for any check deposits. So maybe our Chinese bank acct will not be so useful after all.

On Saturday we made a trek to IKEA and to Carrefour. At IKEA we picked up some things with lots of color to make our neutral hotel like apartment feel less sterile. If you’ve ever been to IKEA you know how busy it can be – well, I’m still trying to figure out why we went there on a Saturday in China where there are 5 times more people everywhere here. Yikes. Then we went to Carrefour, which is a popular store in Europe similar to super walmart. This place supposedly caters to foreigners – but was mostly filled, and I mean filled, with locals. It was an exhausting experience. TV monitors blared ads while you swim your way through all the people so you can stare at rows of strange things in Chinese packaging. Luckily on this trip, our DSP (Destination Support Personnel - an English speaking Chinese person- he is assigned to us by GM to negotiate for our apt and help with other moving needs) went with us and helped me translate some items we needed – such as the difference btwn sugar and salt –which were in bags right next to each other. Well, you can just imagine your local asian market on a huge and very crowded scale, then add in loud and the absence of Homeland around the corner. Forget power shopping - this is a afternoon long experience-especially if you need to start up a whole new kitchen. At least for someone like me - who cooks. ;)

Early Sat night I woke up violently ill fighting nausea and a seriously aching body. That is the sickest I can remember feeling in years. I felt like I’d been run over by a bus. I know now that I’ll be throwing away that giant bag of ramen noodles I bought and enjoyed for dinner… and a few other times that night. I can’t bear to taste those again. Or any ramen for that matter. Ugh. Somehow I lived through the night and slept most of the day Sunday thanks to large doses of Advil PM. It’s expected that you’ll catch some kind of bug when coming here – so I’ll consider myself lucky if that’s all the crud I have to wade through to acclimate myself!

We’re amazed by the ongoing insanely loud crackle popping of the fireworks being set off all around us in the city. Today is the last day of the two week Chinese New Year celebration. Apparently they like to send it out with a “bang”. Hahaha. We’re glad it’s almost over.

This morning Bill set out with our driver for his first day of work – actually he just had a meeting to attend at one of the GM offices, not his regular location – we’ll see if he works a full day or not. My task for the day is to buy some fresh flowers and some matches. If I can accomplish that, which will probably take most of the day, then it will be a successful day. One of the hardest things to get used to so far is the smells. Here in our apartment, they aren’t bad smells, just not home. Since our building is new – it smells like…well – new. Construction dust and paint. So we bought some candles from IKEA only to realize we have no matches to light them. Where do you buy matches here? It’s the little things that trip you up here. Also the tap water has a bit of an odor – not bad – just very Chinese. So it constantly reminds me where we are. That odor proved to be a bit “sickening” when I was nauseous and turned on the tap to wash my hands this weekend.

I now am a bit more motivated to learn Chinese as our housekeeper and driver don’t speak any English. It’s a bit tough to tell the driver where you want to go unless you know how to do it in Chinese. Funny, all the Chinese I’ve learned after almost 6 months of lessons has so far been worthless. I mean really, knowing how to say “that is a table” or “ the teacher is standing to the left side of the student” is actually pretty worthless. :0 Let’s just hope I’ve been gaining a good solid base for learning useful phrases soon.

So that’s it today. I’m really pretty spoiled. Our housekeeper is putting on fresh sheets and making the bed as I speak. So with all my complaining, don’t feel too sorry for me. :)

Check out my pics...
http://picasaweb.google.com/phoebeloh/ArrivalInChina?feat=directlink