Shanghai!

Our first full day in Shanghai! Yesterday afternoon, our administrative assistant, Yiming, picked us up from the airport and drove us to our home away from home--the foreign guest house at Shanghai Normal University. Our favorite parts about our living quarters:
(1) Kaipo the super monkey: he was the first to greet us, sitting on the sofa when we entered. He's still there watching over Scottie as he sleeps.
(2) The innovative crib.
(3) Our therepeutic hard-board beds...think box springs covered with comfy blankets.

Last night, we took a campus tour. We were exhausted, but surprisingly, we remembered how to get around this morning. Our adventures today:
(1) Early morning shopping at "Trust-Mart". Our favorite section was the seafood section, complete with a bucket full of wriggling LIVE EELS. (Shudder.)
(2) In the afternoon, we met up with two other professors from St. Martin's in Olympia and went to Yuyuan Garden---the oldest part of Shanghai. Our visit included a scrumptious meal of Chinese dumplings filled with vegetables, shrimp, and a yummy mystery meat. We're getting good at chopsticks. Some pics of this adventure are included for your viewing pleasure.

Nicole outside the gates of Yuyuan Garden. By "garden", it really means a ton of shops...we think there was a garden in there somewhere.

Where we live in Shanghai, most buildings don't look like what Disneyland leads you imagine. But on our way to Yuyuan, we saw the glimpses of the Disneyland portrayal.

Scottie is checking out the goldfish in the actual "garden" part of Yuyuan garden. Really cool place.