Good evening from Shanghai, China! Pretty low key weekend, which is a positive thing at times! Friday our school took us to a nice restaurant and really showed us a good time. Afterwards, only about four teachers took the bus home. The rest of us went out for a night in the French Concession. One of my favorite aspects of Chinese dining is that usually only one person orders for the whole group. All of the food is then put on a lazy Susan, and you only need to pluck the desired morsel up with your chopsticks (sometimes easier said than done). Whenever we go out with school administrators, they take care of it all. That means I do not have to make any decisions, and I love it! We went to a popular expat bar after dinner, and ended up on a rooftop bar that was possibly a little too ritzy for me. I was unable to order myself a simple beer, and the vice principal of the middle school saw and came to show me how it was done. He would not even let me pay! They are very nice people.

This weekend was much slower paced. We have not been good about keeping food in the apartment yet, as everything is so different (and of course all in Chinese) and we do not have pans, either. We went to a bakery for a light breakfast, and while Angela waited for the internet guy, I went with a friend to a nearby grocery store to learn where it was located. For dinner, a bunch of us new teachers found a very close restaurant much like the one we went to on Friday night, but much less expensive! We ordered a lot between 9 of us, and ended up paying about 70 RMB total. Divide that by 6, and that is your dollar equivalent. Afterwards, we were invited to the apartment of one of the new teachers where we sat and talked. I went to bed very early for a Saturday night! Today we went shopping once in a cab for a few necessities, and then decided to walk to Carrefour, a popular shopping mart, and got a few more. Slowly but surely our apartment is feeling a little less like a completely empty hotel room! Tomorrow we go back to school, but I do not mind. I struggle with so much free time more than I did back in Iowa, since I don’t know what to do with myself! I enjoyed being around all the other new teachers, and when I am busy all day, some down time after school feels alright. One more week of in services, and then the students will come! All for now,

      -Jason

It’s sad to think how much we rely on the Internet! But either way its awesome and we finally got it installed! We even have TV, but of course all the buttons are in Chinese and I’m terrified to push a button. Anyways, below is the blog I prepared about our flight to Shanghai, LAST WEEK! Time flies!

We Arrived to Hot Hot China! And it was SO much easier than expected! Our last flight from Seoul to Shanghai was delayed but with the hour time difference we still made it in decent time! Our first step was immigration/customs, and for some reason I was the most worried about this part! Thankfully it was easy, almost too easy! Immigration/quarantine was as simple showing our passports and looking into a camera! Done! Jason got stuck behind a family and had to wait a bit longer, so during that time I went to find our luggage! After I lifted 5 60 plus lbs bags into a row, Jason arrive and we loaded all of it onto two carts! Thats right folks, ALL of our luggage arrived! Next stop customs! Customs had 2 lines, and all we had to do was walk through, no check of luggage, no questions, simple and we were home free!

After walking by Chinese men asking us if we needed a hotel or a taxi, we found our pick up who was the High School principal and off we went to find our new apartment!

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Good afternoon from Shanghai, China! Angela and I are still working on getting home Internet so blogging is not so easy as we must use our phones. Last night we were supposed to go out with some staff, but were hit with a storm of typhoon like proportion. We decided to still go out with a new friend that lives in our apartment complex. There must have been a foot of water running in the street. We went to a “sport bar” called bocu bocu. After dinner we tried to get a cab to do some shopping but we failed miserably, so everyone was instead asleep by 8:00pm.

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Quick update! We arrived with no problems! Our apartment is awesome and we are using wifi at a neat bakery! More to come later, hopefully we will have our phones working later! It’s very hot….so hot! First day of work tomorrow!