Cultural tour

Another week has gone by, and I can hardly believe it. In the beginning, each day seemed to crawl. Now that I'm feeling more comfortable with my work and my life here, time is starting to go by more quickly. But it still feels like forever until I come home! The BEST part of the week to come is that my friend Sara gets here Friday - yay! I've been counting down her arrival pretty much the entire time I've been here, and now it's only a few days away!

To begin the cultural tour this week, a few co-workers and friends headed out to a Cinco de Mayo celebration last Saturday. No better way to celebrate a Mexican holiday (well, sorta a Mexican holiday, though I think Americans celebrate it more ...) than to live it up in China. Something like that. Anyway, we had a blast. It was a beautiful afternoon and evening which made it so great to be out. And the margaritas weren't bad either! Here we are starting our fun afternoon:

The next stop on the cultural tour was Japan - ok, that's not too far away, but it still counts. Our friend Dave took us to dinner Friday night at a great Japanese steakhouse. Each table gets served their own cooker filled with burning coals and a metal tray on top. You order your meat and veggies and cook it yourself. The food was so delicious. What I loved about this place was the backdrop:

A sumo ring! Though we didn't get to see any live matches, they did have black-and-white films of sumo matches from who-even-knows-when playing in the background throughout dinner. And the owner is a former wrestler! It was a blast. The sake was a nice added touch too.

The last stop on my cultural tour this week was rural China. For the first time, we ventured outside the city here. There was a H3 run about 90 minutes away from Shanghai yesterday. It was in an old water town, which basically means an older town filled with canals and bridges. Here is what our crowded bus to the run looked like, including Kya the German Shepherd (and probably the best trained dog I've ever seen):

Here are a few pics of the town itself:

This was really my first attempt at trail running. Much of the 8-mile route was through forests, grasslands, heck - even on rickety bamboo bridges and ledges of the canals. Let me tell you - it was tough. I was so afraid of turning my ankle that I basically stared down at the ground in front of me the entire time. And I was super worried about falling in the water. A guy on the run saw me snapping pics and offered to get in front of me to take a few of me running. Here's one from far away so you get the idea of how crazy the landscape was (and this wasn't close to the worst of it!), and one of me clearly having fun:

I did dodge a major bullet on this run. I got separated from Holly and she was ahead of me. When we reached a check stop, I caught up to her. She told me that while running on a ledge next to the canal, a giant snake literally crossed her path. This was NOT the news I needed to hear. Yikes! Thank the good Lord I didn't see it. Unfortunately, that was at about 2 miles in. So for the rest of the run I was petrified of seeing one. Thankfully, I did not - just a few gross dead fish.

Since I know I've talked a lot about food with it's head on, please enjoy a pic of the fish we were served as part of dinner after the run. Seriously?

We also checked out an awesome area of Shanghai this week called Tianzifang. Since we've been here, people have continued to ask if we've been there yet. Finally the answer is yes! It was such a cool area - lanes of shops, restaurants, bars and more tucked in a few city blocks. It was quite crowded, but so fun. I'm looking forward to taking Sara back next week! Here I am in front of one of the lanes:

Another funny thing happened to us this week that made us wish we spoke Mandarin (for the record, our classes are going well!). Holly had a form to fill out for a UPS delivery that's been stuck in customs for five weeks. Nope, not a joke. Anyway, a co-worker of ours downloaded something on our computers that translates Mandarin characters into English for you (and visa versa). It's pretty cool. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to disable it so it is often hovering over things and translating either way when I don't mean to. We decided to use the function to try and translate the form. Wow, it took us forever and we still had no clue what it was trying to ask for. Here's what it looks like:

Last but not least, Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful mom! Thanks for taking all my Skype calls at weird hours of the day. I don't know how many times a day I think, "OMG I just did/said something my mom would". But as I get older, I'm finding that's a very, very good thing. I hope to always have your positive outlook, especially during experiences like this!