What a welcome!

Nihao Shanghai!

mmm smog central! 

   It's been far too long and yet it only feels as though   yesterday I was wondering your skinny side streets, dodging motorcyclists and rogue taxi’s and casually brushing off the intense stairs downs on the subway.  It was my first full day back in the city and boy was it eventful!

  Let me start off this account by letting you all know that the jet lag hit me hard the previous night forcing me to pop a gravol around 3 am giving me about 3 hours of blissful rest before I had to force my self out of my splendid slumber only to trek it out to work for 9 am. Despite the early wake up call the morning went rather smoothly, and although the head office is a tad far from where I was staying I managed to make it down to the subway station closest to the office with no difficulty and plenty of time to spare. 

   Feeling pretty good about my first Shanghai conquest in 7 months I decided to take a taxi to the area that I thought the office was in. This left me with plenty of time to walk around, kill some time and take in some of the surroundings before I actually had to go in. BIG MISTAKE!!! After walking for an hour looking for the building I realized I had taken the taxi to the wrong intersection. I then decided to flag a cab and after numerous communication errors we were finally back on track. Somehow I still managed to arrive at the office  early. After all the business was taken care of we were taken to set up a Chinese bank account. Now, the bank is literally a 5 min walk from the office, but of course a this very simple task would be far to easy and boring for Shanghai so why not stir things up a bit!  Just as we were crossing the main intersection a random angry black cloud decided that it was a great time to dump its entire life onto us. Picture gale force winds blowing the enormous amounts of rain in every direction, pitch-black skies, raindrops the size of your hands, blinding lighting and thunder so loud it would make grown man burst into tears! …

    Ok so I’m exaggerating a little bit but the storm was pretty big! We managed to take refuge under a bus shelter, which in hindsight may not have been the smartest idea as the shelter was made of pure mental and stood directly under two large trees.  Drenched, cold, hungry and tired I stood there with fellow teacher Tony and a women who spoke zero English and waited for a half an hour until the rain subsided enough to let us sprint over to the bank. 

About an hour later our bank accounts were set up and we were able to finally make the journey back to our homes (hostel in my case). The trek home went a little something like this: two westerners standing soaking wet in a very very air-conditioned subway being gawked at from every direction; me being pushed profusely while I struggled to make it though the interchanges during Shanghai rush hour; dodging camera phones sneaking very un-stealthy photos (I know I love the spot light, but these people are worse than paparazzi), and of course no day would be complete without being yelled at by an elderly Chinese woman for showing “too much skin”.

Side note: Mom, Dad, I really wasn’t showing too much skin, I was actually dressed pretty professionally. It was only because I’m western that I got yelled at… I mean the girl next to me had short shorts so short I could pretty much see her colita!