Typhoon Wimper and bizarre music encounters

The typhoon that was headed to Shanghai, and that caused me to sacrifice going to a US Women's Soccer team World Cup match, made landfall south of Shanghai and then managed to go west around Shanghai before curving back out east to the city north of Shanghai before it petered out. For all of you wondering how we survived our first typhoon, the answer is thankfully "very well".
We got lots of rain and wind, but nothing like predicted. Unfortunately for the city south of Shanghai they had to evacuate 2 million people as they got the worst of it.

This weekend has been a series of bizarre musical encounters. On Friday I went to the assembly at Olivia's school, which is for the lower school/grade school. At these assemblies one grade hosts and one grade does some kind of performance and they give out awards. The music teacher announced that the 4th grade class would do a song for us, and they had printed on signs the refrain that they wanted us to sing along with them. The refrain was "Take me home country roads, to the place I belong. West Virgina, Mountain Mama take me home, country roads." I couldn't believe the class was singing this John Denver song about West Virginia, to an audience of 70-80% Europeans! Then I'm listening to the words and there is a line that goes something like "...life is old here, older than the trees" and I could not help but bursting out in laughter. Here are these 4th graders from all over the world singing about how old the trees are in West Virginia, while they stand in a country that has documented history of THOUSANDS of years. It was too much for me.

Saturday night Joe and I went out with friends for drinks and some clubbing. We were in the French Concession, an old part of Shanghai developed by the French and we started at the Paulner, a German restaurant. We go in and there is a Phillapino band playing. Not unusual in Shanghai, they are great singers. But we all looked at each other and cracked up when they played "La Bamba" and sang in Spanish. A very international experience this is turning out to be! But the night got more interesting. We left the Paulner to go to a bar called "Malone's" which our friends claimed had a great band. We got there and to our friends' horror the regular band was not there and in their place was a Phillapino band dressed in 50s attire (flipped bouffant hairdos, poodleskirts and all) and singing oldies tunes from the 50s and 60s. OK, well this wasn't as odd because it was an American bar, but still classic.
So we hit the next bar. The singers were decent, and we were having a good time dancing. But the most obvious form of entertainment was watching the "working girls" arrive. Now, we all know that I'm not exactly a clubbing kind of girl most of the time, but I've been out and about in Portland and I swear it is not as easy to pick out the working girls in Portland as it is here. It's shocking, really, they seem to arrive in groups of 5-6 and they literally make a bee-line for the white guys. But everybody's dancing and having a good time. Until a scantily clad woman hopped up on the bar and that's when Joe and I notice the poles up and down the bar. Hmmm. When I expressed shock that there would be pole dancing at what seems like a typical bar, our friends said "welcome to Asia, this is totally normal." Hmmm. I'm getting all sorts of different educations in Shanghai!