Days 155-156: Back in Shanghai (The Re-Adjustment)

Our first full day here, Monday, I woke up at 5 am and worked a lot on organizing my USA pictures and then later I did some writing on this blog. I got a bit tired around 1:30 pm and then didn't wake up again until about 8:30 pm. Kerry is still asleep as I'm typing this. We're both pretty exhausted and didn't even unpack much yet. I went back to sleep at about 11--I think I'm still pretty jet-lagged.

Tuesday I woke up about 5 again. We had breakfast and then finished our unpacking; I then worked on my "critical incident" report that I have to give in Dali. I've decided to talk about when I was asked to suddenly start teaching the Honors American Lit. class every other week. Later in the day, Kerry and I went to Carrefour. To get some exercise, we walked to Jiangwan Town station instead of hopping on the 745--we took it to Hongkou Plaza, where the store is located. Before going to the store, I bought Kerry a BEAUTIFUL rainbow-colored rose for Valentine's Day (even though it was quite expensive). The store itself was very crowded and the second floor was decked out with a lot of Chinese New Year decorations--the color red was everywhere: red lanterns, red dogs (since it's the year of the dog), etc. On the way back, we stopped at KFC for a bite to eat. We had a bit of a struggle conveying what we wanted to eat, even though the cashiers tried to speak a little English to us. It's interesting to me how the Chinese don't provide nearly as much food in their "meal box" as Americans do: in America, you'd get two-three big pieces of chicken, whereas here in China, you get one big piece and two very small ones. After getting home, I worked on my syllabus for Short Novels, and then later made a dinner: a chicken ranch salad and then the rest of the apple-pear salad I made that morning for dessert.

The rainbow rose for Kerry, given on Valentine's Day.