What a typical day in Shanghai looks like:

I thought I would share with you a typical day here for us in Shanghai. We started out today by heading to the store to buy eye glasses for Aiden and I. We had Yang, our driver take us to the same place we went four years ago when we were here. It turns out that it isn’t where it used to be. After an hour and a half driving through crazy, busy traffic our driver got us to where he thought the Eye Glass Emporium used to be. L  (I saved a business card from before)Yang called the business and they explained where they had moved. He drove us to near the new location, but he couldn’t explain where it was exactly so after a little while of him telling me to wait, but not really knowing what for, a young woman came out of one of the buildings and waved at us. She apparently had come from the business to escort us to her store. We followed her through a quick mart type store, up three flights in the elevator and ended up in a very busy store full of many eye glass vendors.

This is one little shop in a large building FULL of different glasses stores.

 The young ladytook us to the owner of the store and she greeted us very warmly. She speaks very good English and obviously after looking around has a market on Westerners because there were several other Western clienteles besides us.  She and Aiden picked out a pair of glasses, and then it was my turn and finally Claire decided she really wanted a pair of sunglasses. Claire didn’t like any of the kid’s sunglasses as she had her heart set on an oversized set of adult glasses. So after a lot of deliberating about which ones might be more appropriate Claire picked out some oversized, reddish glasses. Here she is in her glasses before we added the shaded lenses.

While Claire was picking out her glasses, our glasses were being made. The frames are already made, but the technician shaped the lenses. He is done in about 20 minutes, so amazing to me even though I experienced this last time too.

Here's Riley trying on some beautiful purple ladies glasses, he's such a goof. :)

 By now we are starving and it turns out it’s going to take a while for them to get to Claire’s glasses so they suggest we go eat. We have no idea where we are or where to go so the owner of the glasses place suggests her worker again escort us to a nearby restaurant and then she will bring our glasses when they are done. We head back down the elevator and find a simple little restaurant and while we are eating our glasses show up. This so cool and such great service and all for about $115.  The $115 includes replacing the lenses in Aiden’s old glasses too. J

Then instead of being stuck in the car for another hour drive home we jumped on the subway and got to our stop in about 15 minutes. The driver is nice, but when you need to get somewhere quick it turns out the subway is probably quicker unless there is no traffic

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After our glasses adventure Claire and I decide to go have pedicures. Claire has been dying to have one since she recently missed out on an opportunity to go for my niece’s birthday. I asked the nice ladies at the front desk of the apartment where they would recommend and after a few minutes of me trying to describe a pedicure with sign language they recommended a nice place up the street. They wrote out the Chinese characters on a piece of paper. Then Claire and I set out on our quest to find this place with the unknown sign. We weren’t even really sure which street it was on. I stopped in a few stores and showed them my note and people kept pointing me in a similar direction and eventually we found it. This place was very small, not in any way luxurious, had an incredibly strong chemical smell, but did pedicures. Good enough! When they seated us, there was a little English, but not much. But the patron next to me spoke pretty good English so I had her interpret as much as I could without ruining her experience. At first they said they couldn’t do Claire because she was a kid, but when they saw how sad and disappointed she looked they changed their mind. She went first and had a very content look on her face, like she had joined some lady club that she had been yearning after for years.

 Then it was my turn. They did a nice job, it wasn’t your spa pedicure with all the massaging and scrubbing, but I have some pretty toes now. I guess I had to ask for the extras. I’m learning, it’s taking me awhile.

Next it was time for dinner with Jeff. We walked down the street to a Muslim, Uighur restaurant. It was a mix of Chinese and Persian style food. We had lamb, eggplant, green beans, and beef with yogurt. Super yummy, I think we will have to check out that place again as there were many really good looking things on the menu. Every time we have tried to go to this place it has been so busy that people are spilled out onto the street. We figured a Monday night was probably our best chance and it was. The one disappointment was there were no belly dancers today. Riley in particular was looking forward to them.

On our walk home Claire wanted to take a side trip to a little court yard near our apartment where some feral and not feral cats live. This side trip happens several times a day, nearly every time we leave or return to our apartment. There is a momma cat and four babies that we can’t get close to and then there is one brown kitty that always greets Claire when she goes to “Check” on the kitties. Here is a picture of Claire and her friend. 

The sad thing is most people here do not like cats so they are not nice to them. They look appalled that Claire is petting this cat (She always goes back and washes her hands). We have watched some of the other young children playing in the court yard and they will call the kitty over and then yell at it in a really mean way. It some ways I think Claire is doing this cat a disservice to be nice to it because it trusts Claire, but shouldn’t trust these other children and I am afraid it might get hurt. L

The last thing that I was going to mention about our walk home from the court yard tonight is the court yard is overlooked by a rather fancy restaurant. I have not gone into this restaurant, but it looks like from the court yard that there are many private rooms with one large round table in each room. Usually we are preoccupied by the kitties and I don’t pay any attention to the restaurant, but tonight one waitress caught my attention. She was clearing the table and kept taking bites of some dish that was left. She thought no one was watching her. I could tell by the way she kept looking out the door to see if anyone could see her, but I could see her from outside. She was acting nervous, but kept taking more and more bites. I have never been a waitress, but I don’t think it would ever occur to me to touch someone else’s uneaten food. I know it’s a little different here because every meal is served family style. Family style means that all the food is kept in the center of the table and each person uses their own chop sticks to take a small portion and put it directly in their mouth. Your personal bowl and plate are really only there for bones or other inedible pieces. Maybe her behavior isn’t odd and maybe I was misreading her nervousness, but it seemed a little odd, or maybe it’s just a perk for a food server. Either way the food she was stealing couldn’t possibly be as good as our dinner.