Thursday, not a whole lot happened--work mostly...so I 'm just going to skip ahead to Friday. Friday we had Chinese lessons at SISU, from 1:30-4 pm. It's a good class, but we always feel overwhelmed after. Our teacher, Wang Laoshi, gives us a lot of vocabulary, but I sort of wish we'd get more practice conversations, even though they are uncomfortable for us. In the evening, Kerry went gaming and I graded response papers. Woo hoo.
Saturday, the big event of the day was having dinner--the second "Shanghai Fulbrighters Dinner"--with Connie (with her three kids) and Abram (who was by himself). We went to a Japanese sushi place near Abram's apartment, but it wasn't all that great. Kerry liked the pork, and I liked the sashimi, but I didn't care for their sushi roll all that much, and Kerry didn't like their tempura. A key problem, again, was getting there. Abram gave us really poor directions, telling us to exit the subway at exit 7, when there was no exit 7 on line 3......which we did not know. And apparently neither did he. But all was forgiven once the food arrived, and we had some good conversation. Connie, especially likes to talk. I like how she's interested in gender studies and literature. Her daughter, Meara, is a precocious seven-year-old who kept trying to show me a bunch of pictures of her trip to Japan. She, also, is quite a talker!
Pictures from the Shanghai Fulbrighters dinner:
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| (Left side) Me, Connie, Meara. (Right side) Kerry, Abram, Rory, Kiernan |
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| Me, Abram, and Connie: Shanghai Fulbrighters! |
Sunday, more dining: we met up with Mark, his family, and his friends at a steamed bun restaurant near the Yu Gardens. I like that area a lot, but oh, is it crowded! And we are prey for scams there: one woman came up to us and asked if we she could practice her English with us, and we were pretty sure this was the "tea scam" we heard about at the Fulbright orientations. Also, several people asked us if we wanted watches, to which we replied, "Bu" (No). Anyway, we got to meet Mark's wife Carrie (what a coincidence!) as well as his son, Declan, and 1.5 year old daughter, Ellie. They were also with their friends Tad and Adrienne and their daughter, Eowyn (I'm not sure if that's the right spelling, but all I know is that it's from
Lord of the Rings). I had some pork and shrimp buns, and Kerry had plain pork. I also imbibed more chrysanthemum tea, which I'm beginning to like, as well as some egg drop and scallion soup, and Kerry had the soup as well. I think I'm developing a taste for warm liquids, especially since the weather is getting increasingly cold here. We had a good time: Mark and his son sat at our table (we couldn't all sit at the same table), and we gave the kids some presents (Declan got a Frozen tin with cookies, Ellie got a pink Minnie Mouse bowl, plus we gave them pens and pencils--all from the Shanghai Disney Store at the airport). We also gave Mark and Carrie a choice of two t-shirts from Taiwan. Fun times! Afterwards, we perused a couple Xmas stores and shopped for other bargains: picked up some gifts. My favorite store was a "10 Yuan" store, which is basically like a dollar store in the USA. They had some cool things, which I won't describe here because they might end up as gifts! My evening was taken up with school work--tomorrow's a tough day--two classes and I'm not home until 8:30 or 9 pm. Sigh. Mondays are really tough.
A couple pictures from the dinner with Mark:
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| Steamed buns in Shanghai! |
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| From left: counterclockwise--Adrienne, Eowyn, Tad, Carrie, Emmie, Mark, Declan |
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| Mark and the crazy Engrish shirt he chose. |
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