We Made It! The first 2 days...

The Welsh family: Joe, Stephanie, Olivia, and Gigi, have all finally arrived in Shanghai. Tuesday, July 31st we left Portland for our 2 year adventure in Shanghai. When we found out in late April that we'd be coming to Shanghai, 3 months seemed like a reasonable amount of time to get ready. It flew by! And for the last 3 weeks we've been creating and checking off lists like crazy and racing towards the July 31st deadline. There is nothing like an "I'm moving to China" deadline to get stuff done! Including stuff that should have been done long ago and wasn't (will, safe deposit box, yardwork, removing hydrangea wallpaper!)

With all the tying up loose ends and purchasing and packing for China, we also took a lot of time to see friends and family. It was unexpectedly bittersweet to see everyone, it made us appreciate how incredibly lucky we are to have the amazing set of friends and family that we do, and it made us question why we would ever want to go so far away from it. But we go forward with the thought that we will make good friends here too, and that our kids are getting a once in a lifetime experience.

Getting here went surprisingly well, if you don't count the embarrassing amount of luggage we brought with us. 8 suitcases, 2 carseats, one pack-and-play, and 6 carry-ons. (I'll post the embarrassing pictures later when I find the cord for the camera.) Seriously, we looked like a tour group with all our luggage instead of a family of four. What, you may ask, could we possible put in 8 huge suitcases? We weren't allowed to ship any liquids, gels, creams, lotions or food in the air shipment. So there were a couple suitcases full of bathroom-type stuff and foods that we knew it would be hard or expensive to get here. And we have been warned by many that we will never find shoes for our big American feet here in Shanghai, so a number of new shoes made it into the luggage as well. And then there was the suitcase of art supplies and toys to keep the kids happy until the rest of our shipment arrives in 6 weeks.

We got incredibly lucky with the driver who met us at the airport, he speaks a little English. This is a major coup, and total luck of the draw. But it's so huge for us that we will be able to call him and tell him where to come get us!

Aug 1 First night:
Flight gets in at 5:30pm. Kids and parents, everybody in bed at 8:00 pm. Kids slept until 2:30, were up for 1.5 hours eating snacks and playing, and then were coerced into going back to sleep. We all slept until 6:30am, not bad for a jet-lagged family!

Aug 2 First day: Breakfast at the hotel, lots of western style food so not too drastic of an adjustment for us. Although the very soupy yogurt got a thumbs down from Olivia, and a slurp-it-up from Gigi. :)
We headed over to the apartment to get our keys. The rep from the relocation company was there and so was the landlord and her son. Nancy, our landlord, is awesome. I don't know how we got so lucky. Not only did she print up instructions for all the appliances in Chinese and English, but she took us room by room explaining stuff. She also talked one of the women from the apartment leasing office into going shopping with us on Saturday to get the additional furniture we need. What an angel! Then she and her son George took us out for lunch and on a quick tour around the area. Unfortunately the girls were melting down at this point so we had to cut it short, but all-in-all, an incredible way to be welcomed to our new home.
Girls took naps at the hotel while we strategized about what needed to be done for the apartment. Sheets and pillow were first priority for beds...and as we're having this conversation we also ended up taking naps!
At dinnertime we headed over to the SuperBrand mall (7 floors of shops and restaurants) to find sheets. I read in some book that a store in Superbrand was one of the few with fitted sheets. With some charades at the information desk we found the bedding store. As luck would have it, they had sheet sets with 1,2,1 listed, meaning 1 fitted sheet, 2 pillowcases, and 1 flat sheet. Mission accomplished, kids melting down, let's find dinner. It's 7:00 and everyone is seriously dragging. We gave in and ate at Pizza Hut. :( We felt like lame Americans, but what are you gonna do? Other than seriously different appetizers, the pizza tastes exactly like it does in the US. The girls were very happy, yet sleepy and had to be carried all the way out of the mall to the taxi.

Aug 3 Second day:
Girls slept through the night, hallelujah, but are up at 4:00 ready to go. Ugh, but Joe somehow talks them into going back to sleep until 5:30. We'll take it!
It's health-check day. We meet Steven from Deloit in the lobby and taxi it 45 minutes to the health clinic. This is my first experience with kids in a taxi for a long distance with no carseats. It's freaky after years of safety-conscious US and I kept thinking about how to be a human seatbelt if something happened, but at the same time it's incredibly freeing to just jump in a car with kids on your lap and go. And of course they think this is soooo fun. Except for Olivia, in her serious moment, when she realizes no one is wearing a seatbelt ("is that safe Mama?" well, not really, but there are no seatbelts in the taxi, so we just have to hold on") On a side note, I've always wondered what they do in NYC when people hail a cab with kids...do they just put them in their lap as well?
Anyway, off to the health check. A totally surreal experience. The guy from Deloit pays our way through this process and photocopies all our stuff. We go into a locker room and strip down leaving our pants on. They give you a robe to wear and ask you to get on the scale. When you're on the scale the woman instructs you to "look over here" and points to a blank spot on the wall. What? Does she not think I know how much I weigh? She tells us to go to room 112 where we sit in line to have blood taken. No one's talking, including the nurse. Gigi's comment "I no like this place Mama". I'm thinking the same thing kid. Having blood taken without any verbal communication is very weird. Then it's off to room 108, room 109, room 107, etc. Every room is strange because you don't know what to expect, they just take your paper, point to a stool or bed, do some kind of exam, give you a stamp, hand you back your paper and send you to the next room. I had an eye exam, an ultrasound (just below the ribs, what were they looking for?), chest X-rays (where I was instructed to wrap my arms around the Xray machine), an ECG (where they put clamps covered in foil on my leg, wrist and chest!),
and a breast exam. All with two little girls in tow. Thank goodness the Chinese love children. Nonetheless, it was bewildering for them when I couldn't answer their questions about what they were doing to me. The whole process took about an hour, which was half the time we were told to expect, so we felt lucky.
Then it's off to the apartment. We pull the sheets out of the package, ready to make beds and truly start settling in. First package open: 1 flat sheet, 2 pillow shams, 1 duvet cover. Hmmm, not exactly what we were expecting. It sucks not being able to read Chinese characters and being dumb enough to super-impose American standards/packaging onto Chinese goods. Wondering how hard it would be to take back these sheet sets, we set out for lunch around the corner.
Walking in the 100+ degrees/90% humidity is pretty much like walking around in a shower all day long. We land at the East West cafe which serves a little of everything and have a good lunch. Joe gets the bill and learns that they don't take credit cards, oops. And then he realizes he's 200 RMB short on cash. He calls our newfound friend Dwayne and asks to borrow 200 RMB, luckily Dwayne is home and has some cash. Joe runs to get it and we get out of the restaurant without doing dishes. It's true what they say, ex-pats are a great bunch who definitely take care of each other and have your back. Dwayne laughingly told us that we managed to find just about the only restaurant in Jinqiao that doesn't take plastic. Since our afternoon plans include a shopping trip to Carrefour (the french grocery store that is like a Fred Meyer), we ask him if they take plastic. Luckily they do.
After naps we head to Carrefour to start outfitting our house with the basics. On the way in, I see a family with a baby (8-9 months old) in those split pants. I wonder out loud to Joe what happens if a baby wearing those pants has to go in the store. My question is answered when we see the same family in the store later and the grandma is soaked all down her front and still holding the baby. Ugh, gross, yuck. Diapers are a concept I am not giving up, no matter what.

Shopping at Carrefour is the opposite of shopping at a grocery or Target at home. Usually in the US you have to hunt around for someone to help you. Here, there are about 6 people in every aisle and if you pause to look at something they immediately start trying to get you to purchase whatever is on special sale. Imagine going to Costco during sample time, but there being 5 sample ladies in every aisle, and some of them have microphones. It's overwhelming!
On the other hand, it's actually kind of fun, everything goes in this store. Some people get around on roller-blades, other people try out bikes by riding them up and down the aisles. It's a circus. We only got about half of what we needed, but we were all overwhelmed and decided dinner was more important.

For dinner, we gave in to our desire for comfort and ate at Blue Frog. Blue Frog is a restaurant started by an ex-pat and it has all your typical American fare, plus some good Chinese dishes as well. Since we eat early with the kids, we got there during their buy-one-get-one-free drink happy hour, and discovered one of the joys of having a driver! Mom & Dad relax and have two drinks instead of the usual one. Everyone had a great meal and it's back to the hotel for us.

Tomorrow we officially move out of the hotel into the apartment and real living begins.

It's hard to wrap up the first impressions. It's a huge city, it's oppressively hot and humid, and there is constant activity. Since we are coming from clean-and-green Portland, Oregon it's hard to comprehend the air pollution being so bad you can't see more than 1/2 mile and the bath water being suspiciously yellow. But it's still a great adventure and we are having fun.

Stay tuned for more postcards...