Shanghai

It’s hard to believe that this is only our third year overseas and yet we are already moving on to our second international teaching positions.  With our 2nd summer vacation as international teachers over, we found ourselves yet again on an airplane zooming towards new beginnings. Our trepidation and nerves were less than they were two years ago but our excitement was at the same level.  “China!  We’re moving to China!”  During our stressful job hunt last January, if you had asked me where our next location might be, I don’t think China would have made it to the top of our list.  Yet again, when we were forced to make our decision after only two and a half days of intense interviews and stiff meet and greets, we went with the school that felt the best to us, not necessarily the school in the most alluring location.
We were in Shanghai 2 years ago for a technology conference and were not impressed with the city at all.  To be fair, we only saw a little of it during the evenings after our brains were fried with all we were learning.  But, the skies were filled with a heavy brownish-gray smog, the streets seemed crowded and the parts of the city we saw were heavy with concrete and absent of anything green. 
So why did we decided to say yes to jobs here?  Well, Shanghai American School has one of the best reputations among all of the international schools in Asia!  We couldn’t believe we got offered the jobs.  As we signed our names to our shiny new contracts we knew through the international teacher grape vines that we would probably be working our little heinies off just to fit in but the overall package they were offering along with what it will hopefully do for our resumes couldn’t have been ignored just because of brownish, grayish smog filled skies and a lack of plants right?  Right?  Well, we were certainly crossing our fingers as we hurtled towards our future in Shanghai. 
Most of the time a sixteen hour flight is not such a great way to spend time but when it seems that time is on fast-forward it can create  a much needed chance to reflect.  Two years ago during the tech conference, we couldn’t help but notice that Shanghai was going to be hosting the 2010 World Expo.  There were proud posters and banners all over the city.  Then when we returned to Seoul, we noticed the Discovery Channel was playing shows on China like they personally had stake in the country.  I’m sure it also had to do with the Olympics being in Beijing, but still!  There was program after program about what China is doing to clean up its skies, what it’s doing to make Shanghai a “Green City”  and how they are closing up factories and putting in parks to improve the overall health of its cities.  Loren and I watched these shows from our little t.v. in Korea and were curious about all the changes supposedly taking place in our largest neighboring country but figured we had already done our China trip so we’d have to continue to learn about it through the t.v.   With the ink still drying on the papers that would dictate at least the next two years of our lives, Loren and I continued to wonder about our choice to make Shanghai, gray, concrete-cold, Shanghai our home.

Home Coming?
  Unlike when we landed in Korea for the first time, on a runway that only an experience pilot with tons of high tech gadgets could land on for all the fog, our pilot easily navigated us onto the tarmac amidst clear blue skies on a swelteringly hot and humid summer day.  We were pleasantly surprised by the beautiful blue skies with fluffy white clouds that greeted us and accompanied us on our drive to our new home.  Maybe those shows on the Discovery channel were not all bought and paid for propaganda?  We were elated to see our fluffy white companions hanging out above us even though we were not convinced they’d stay.
 After our long flight what we were most anxious to discover was what our new place would look like. Would it be a small but comfortable apartment like Korea?  Would it be nice but maybe not what we had been hoping for?  After making it smoothly through customs we only had a 45 minute bus trip until we would find out.  A veteran teacher from SAS was at the airport to greet us and help us to our new apartment.  We asked her all sorts of questions about the city and about her summer break, trying to will our minds to stay alert and our tongues to continue the light conversation even through our excited but jet-lagged, exhaustion.
At last our bus turned onto a tree lined drive and looped around a small round about then came to a complete stop in front of a stately brick building.
 
Ann, our ambassador, used her key to let us in the ground floor of our building.  Loren and I noticed we were rolling our suitcases over marble floors and past tastefully neutral decor our our way to a small, glass elevator. Hmm, could be a good start, we thought.  Up a hand full of floors and at last the door to our new home stood before us.  Ann opened the tall wooden door and Loren and I entered with wide eyed excitement to find a marble entry way leading to beautiful hardwood floors, and a huge living room and dining room.  After only seeing that much we knew we had arrived.  Then we got a short tour through the rest of the apartment.  We have a huge kitchen, fully equipped, 2 guest bedrooms, 2 and 1/2 bathrooms, a large master bedroom, a walk-in closet! a vanity area and a master bathroom that honeymoon suites would surely be willing to advertise.  And my favorite feature, or one of the many, we have 2 balconies!  Oh yea!  We have arrived indeed.  Our place feels more like a one story house than it does an apartment. 

Living Room

Dining Room with view of balcony #1

Master Bathroom

View from Balcony #1

With our first surprises and discoveries behind us, we are now in the slow and sometimes uncomfortable process of getting settled.  Our apartment doesn’t feel as huge as it did when we first arrived but it echos, proving that it is still a huge, mostly empty space.  We are still waiting to get our shipment out of Korea that is full of our favorite paintings, wood carvings, and photos that we’ve collected over our 2 years there.  We keep thinking that we’ll feel more at home with our things here to surround us with familiarity.  In the mean time, to help us add some character to our stark white, empty apartment, we are even considering painting our place.  Possibly some blue will do?  Who knows?  At this point we are taking it slow and getting to know our home and neighborhood one room or step at at time. 

Jinqaio

The "A" and the "I" buildings, Jinqiao landmarks

Our neighborhood is becoming less and less a mystery to us.  We live in a huge expat area called Jinqiao.  There is a Starbucks within 5 minutes walking distance from us as well as a couple strips of fancy restaurants geared towards hungry, and wealthy expats.  I have to say that with all the great food options, the first few months it was really hard not to go out to eat every night or even better yet, get the food delivered to our door.  We can get almost everything delivered here.  In fact for Loren’s birthday we hosted a robot themed party and realized we didn’t know where to buy ice so we just called Sherpas, our favorite delivery service and they delivered some right to our door!  Incredible, I know. 

Having brunch at one our our favorite local restaurants, The Blue Frog

Grocery shopping in Jinqiao can either be a real cultural experience if we go to the “wet market” where local farmers and fishermen who troll the many waterways for crawdads and fish sell their wares or we can shop at the local Carrefore, a large western style grocery store or if we are looking for something harder to find like Kraft Mac and Cheese, we can just go to Pines, a grocery store that caters to the expat community.  We’ve found that no matter where we go shopping, the produce is very cheap and most other goods that are locally produced are also really cheap.  For example, today we went to Pines, which is considered a more expensive store and bought 3 large fresh ripe tomatoes for only 5RMB.  That’s about $.70.  Pines also has a small organic section where we can buy in season produce very reasonably priced.  Oh, and they also sell all sorts of fresh herbs as well as dried herbs. 

Fresh herbs from Pines

Hormone and antibiotic free eggs all the way from Korea! 

Looks like the Spirit of Halloween visits Shanghai after all!

Just LOOK at the spices!

I tried so hard to find spices in Korea that I had them shipped here.  They are sitting in a warehouse right now waiting to come live in my kitchen here not knowing that I’ve already stocked up on the essentials.  Poor Korean spices!  I’m not hurting for anything here so far.  All of our food cravings have been satisfied and then some.

Being in the expat neighborhood certainly has its perks, but it also manages to make us feel pretty disconnected from our host country.  Many times we have to remind ourselves that we do live in China, not little America, or little Europe.  We recently bought bikes and enjoy cruising around and out into the Chinese neighborhoods.  It can feel like Jinqiao is huge, but only a few blocks away there is typical Chinese housing, stores and less and less expats wandering around.  We plan to keep exploring these areas.  

Taken on a weekend bike ride in our neighborhood.

With all we’ve discovered here in Shanghai to this point, I think I can speak for us both when I say we were very wrong to judge this city so quickly two years ago.  Even though we haven’t had our little fluffy white companions greet us every day, we’ve seen them floating in a baby blue sky on many occasions and have experienced less of the brownish-gray skies than we had expected.  Our neighborhood is full of trees and green spaces and the city has surprised us with its many parks and old tree lined streets.  Shanghai is a city that has a very long history of inviting in foreigners and accommodates us well.  If we aren’t careful, we could live our lives here almost never speaking Mandarin or venturing out into the unknown.  But, we’re already venturing out further and further from our fancy apartment, and out of our safe expat neighborhood to see what’s around the next corner and each time we do, we are surprised and impressed by what we find.  Shanghai is a huge city full of history and traditions that sits on the coast of an even larger country that is alive in the minds of world at this moment.  We can’t wait to see more of our host country and of our new home city.  In fact, I think we may have just stumbled upon a place that beats in rhythm with our nomadic hearts; at least for the foreseeable future that is.