The great firewall & Mexican food does exist!

OK, so among the many things we learn everyday, here's one about this blog. Blogspot.com is blocked by the Great Firewall of China. Amazingly, I can post and edit blogs, but I cannot go to www.swelsh73.blogspot.com and see anything! So I can see that people have posted comments, but I cannot get to them and see them. Sorry! :( One of those weird things about being in China is that the government blocks reading most blogsites but not posting to them.

The week has been full of noticing quirky and clever things here in China, and about a few totally ordinary things as well. On Wednesday night Dana invited me out for Ladies Night with a few of her friends. They were all celebrating being back in town after the summer expat exodus. Dana, knowing of my love of Mexican food, picked a Mexican restaurant with free margaritas all night long for the ladies. And despite what all the books said, the food was not half bad! The flour tortillas were weirdly sweet, but the corn tortillas were great as was the enchilada sauce. Awesome, and the margaritas flowed all night long. As we were leaving the restaurant to go to a club, I got my first taste of seeing all the "working girls" who literally all arrived at the restaurant en masse at 11:00.

Quirky & clever things:
Magnets on the back of doors and magnetic doorstops that pop up from the floor. So much cooler than those metal and rubber doorstops we have sticking out of walls in the US.
Umbrellas being used for rain and sun shade - no matter what weather an umbrella is the right tool for the job!
Sleeves for riding bikes. The Chinese have sleeves (not the rest of the shirt) but just sleeves with elastic on the top and bottom that they wear when bicycling. It's a very clever way to keep arms out of the sun and it's cooler than putting on a jacket. :)
Grocery carts that go between floors. All the grocery stores I've been to here are at least two stories. And they have these grocery carts with the craziest, wonky wheels. You can't get these darn carts to go straight and you totally have to lean into it to go around a corner. We must have traded the first 3 carts back before we realized that all the carts were this way. But we discovered the genius behind these carts when we left the store. The stores all have these people movers that are on an incline and go between the floors, instead of an escalator or elevators. We got on these people movers with the cart, fully prepared to hang onto the weight of the cart as we went down. As soon as we stepped onto the people-mover the wonky wheels lock into the tread of the people mover and are unmoveable! Brilliant!
Getting my bearings. No matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to get my sense of direction in tact. I took my bicycle out for a little ride yesterday and even though I swear I just went around two blocks, I ended up somewhere that looked unfamiliar and almost panicked. But I turned around and back-tracked and managed to find my wrong turn. But seriously, how have I lost the ability to "go around the block"?

Ordinary things:
Fritos, cheetos, Papa John's pizza, Americans. We went to a party on Saturday night at Dana & Dwayne's house and they pulled out all the stops with the American food. We're not really deprived of any American food if we look hard enough here in Shanghai, but just seeing a whole table covered with Amercian food, at a party with everyone speaking English, felt so NORMAL that it was great. That is, of course, until we kept getting introduced as the FOBs (Fresh Off the Boat). :)
Michelle Johnston, a good friend of ours from college, who also works at Intel with Joe, is in town for work. She spent the day with us and we realized how relaxing it is to be with people who you've known for a long time, who you don't have to explain your history and views to. And then we had to admit that it's hard work making new friends. It's exciting and interesting to meet new people, but it's also exhausting to try to figure out what you have in common, if you're going to click, etc. It would be so great to be Olivia's age. She has asked us so many times what the names of her friends are, because in her mind everybody in her new preschool class is automatically her friend. What a great way to look at life.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that I've had my first taste of heaven. Xiao Chen, our ayi, came on Saturday. She cleaned the whole house, did the laundry and the ironing, and organized a few of my drawers. She's wonderful! Of course, every time I tried to talk to her I had to whip out the English/Chinese dictionary, and even then I am pronouncing everything so badly she has to look at the Chinese character before she can get what I'm saying!
And one last thing, that American tendency to speed louder and slower when someone doesn't understand you is apparently an American genetic thing. We discovered this because Olivia was in the laundry room chattering away to Xiao Chen. Then I start to hear the volume of the words rise, and she slows down all her words. I go in to explain that we have to learn the Chinese words if we want to talk to Xiao Chen, we can't just yell at her. :) So Olivia says to me, "OK, can you tell me the Chinese words for "Swan Lake"?" She wanted to tell Xiao Chen that she had read the story of Swan Lake. :P I've seriously got to sign up for Mandarin classes THIS week.