Melissa visited!

Before last week, the last time I'd seen Melissa was when I was about twelve.  We went to Sunday School together at the wonderful Garneau United Church in Edmonton, the most welcoming and diverse church community I've ever known, and where Grandma played the organ. 
So.  When Grandma and Melissa's mom discovered we're both living in China, we all made short work of planning for Melissa to come up from Macau - I'll go down there when it's time for a visa run in a few months.  It was a reunion with funness of epic proportions, and between reminisces of hymnals and Christmas pageants, we tore up the town.  Art supply shopping, gallery browsing, Bund strolling, Expo adventuring, dignitary meeting, fancy dinner eating, wine sipping, trendy bar going* - two days?  No problem. 

Highlights included:

• Me getting attacked by a Japanese toilet in a very fancy art gallery (I admit I shouldn't have pressed all those buttons)

• Skipping the four-hour line to the French Expo Pavilion by flashing our Canadian passports and walking haughtily through the VIP entrance

• Narrowly missing being lit on fire along with the bar at Bar Rouge - those bartenders are showy buggers

Thanks for the good times, Melissa!  Can't wait to hit the slots in Macau.  Just kidding, Grandma.



*Cute stuff in the mail to whoever can tell me where the heck I should put dashes in that sentence.

Oh haiii, Pearl Tower

Let the Expo shenanigans begin!  That's the China pavilion behind us.

*Sip* You were saying, Minister?

 

 

Expo is culture-sensitive.

There is a Hershey's store.  And they have Reese's.  EEE!!!  *Wiping chocolate peanut butter off face*

Vino at Glamour Bar - a definite thighlight

Julia visited!

Remember Julia?  She was one of my closest friends the year we studied together at Donghua University.  Then she moved back to Poland.

:(

But she came back!  And we went exploring around Xiaonanmen ("Little south door"), where Shanghai's southernmost city gate used to be.  Now, it's a neighbourhood clinging to its past as highrises and a brand-new metro station pop up around it.  We found an amazing laneway fabric market, took some photos, and ate lamb-on-a-stick, one Shanghai's most delectable street foods.

In the old parts of Shanghai, the photos take themselves.  Bicycles, of course, are everywhere.

The fabric market street.  Produce and poultry were further down.  (Loving my camera's B&W auto setting.)

The colours everywhere were beautiful - it had just rained.  I'm not sure if this is a storage shack or a very small home.

Duck A: "DON'T.  LOOK.  BEHIND YOU."  Duck B: *stifled quack*

The ginger in Shanghai is incredible - so fresh it's actually juicy.

Here we are!  Me rocking the old "I hate being photographed but maybe if I look sideways I'll just look ironic!!!"  Works eeeeevery time.

Chris visited!

What better way to settle back in to Shanghai life than by showing a friend around town?  Chris and I struggled through beginner Mandarin together at the U of A, and he's been working in Beijing (sidenote: I. Love. Beijing.  The wide open skies, the cute cafés.  I strive to move there for awhile sometime, no matter what it would do to my blog title).  Now he lives in Wuhan, a mere six-hour train ride from Shanghai.  Well, not that mere.  Thanks, Chris.

So, we slammed down the fifteen-twos with a few games of crib; bought glasses and Feiyue shoes; stopped by the Hongqiao driving range; spent an uncharacteristic-for-me-but-actually-super-fun evening at a nearby hipster bar; and, you know, made sock puppets.  Iiiiiit was awesome.

Dinner at Wagas with Eric, Allison, and Chris' student Panda.  Yes, Panda.

1. We're both trash-talking cribbage players, but only one of us got skunked.  It wasn't me.

Chris (left) watches his ball sail into the far fence.

Chris' new glasses match Colonel Sanders'.

Mom taught me how to make these, and now I'm kind of obsessed.  Chris' excitement almost eclipsed my own.  He made the one on the right, and is going is going to pressure his high school students to craft them too.