More Snow, More Pictures

Snow continues to fall here. By Southern Indiana standards, it really isn't bad but by Shanghai standards, it's catastrophic. Kate and Emily's school has already called off classes for tomorrow, making it the first snow day in the school's history. Temperatures are right at freezing so we're getting a mix of rain and snow. We had about an inch of sluch on the ground this morning and it continuted to fall all day.

Here is the view from our front porch this morning. That's Shen Bo waiting to drive me to work. And, no- he couldn't get any closer but I wouldn't be surprised if he tried pulling up on the sidewalk to get closer to the gate.

Shanghai really is not equipped for this. This would be like a blizzard hitting Atlanta or Jacksonville. There is no such thing as a salt truck or a snow plow here. Heck, I haven't even seen a snow shovel yet. People are trying to clear sidewalks with brooms and mops (yes- mops!).

A lot of the sidewalks here, especially those downtown, are made of polished granite so you can imagine how slick they are. I came out of McDonalds this morning with a cup of coffee (no drive-thru here) and practically skated back to the van, which provided a lot of amusement to this old Chinese woman who was standing nearby. It looked like she had given up on trying to walk and was just hanging out waiting to see someone take a fall.

On another note, I have tried recently to compress the pictures I've been posting here so they would load faster. However, it looks like I screwed up and now you can't get full size pictures. So here is a link you can follow to all the photos I've used lately if you want to get a better look at some of them. I also added a couple extras that I hadn't posted earlier.

http://picasaweb.google.com/baamick/BlogspotPhotos

Orphanage Pictures

Here are the pictures from Kristi's visit to the orphanage a couple weeks ago. I didn't add much detail to the captions since I wasn't there.

http://picasaweb.google.com/baamick/Orphanage

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is coming and everyone is getting ready. Things are often chaotic here but it's been even worse this past week. Here are some pictures we've taken this week.

Chinese New Year is the equivalent of Christmas in the US. The Chinese people are kind of migratory and think nothing of leaving their families behind while they go to pursue work. It is customary during the New Year holiday to return one's home bearing gifts and money. The photo above was taken earlier this week. Every morning people line up to buy their train tickets home. The actual train station is way over in Puxi but they have these ticket offices all over town. I drive past this one on Zhangyang Road everyday on my way to work and there is seldom more than 5 people in line. This week, there have been hundreds every day.

This is our local Carrefour (you remember Carrefour - think "French-owned, Chinese Wal-Mart"). Not all of the Chnese are traveling. Some have family coming to visit them here in Shanghai so they are all stocking up.

You quickly get used to being a minority here. We really don't even think about it until you see another white face. We initially think, "Man, they really look out of place." Then we realize that that's how we look.

Checking out. They had 63 registers open and it still took about half an hour to check out.

In the US, we usually prefer that the feet be removed from our chickens. If you look closely thru the plastic, you can see the head is folded back over the chicken's back. Pluck 'em, gut 'em, sell 'em.

This picture's not very clear but I was trying to get a shot of the woman in the red sweater. While waiting to check out, she yanked her sweater up and started breast feeding her baby. Kid's gotta eat, right?

"Honey, Junior's coming to visit. We're probably gonna need more chicken, juice boxes, and toilet paper."

This picture has nothing to do with New Years. It's just a guy we happened to see over in Puxi Saturday. You see a lot of these hauling around styrofoam. Evidently they can get paid for recycling it. The Chinese do a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense but they don't waste anything.

Snow

As Ivring Berlin wrote:

Snow

It won't be long before we'll all be there with snow

Snow

I want to wash my hands, my face and hair with snow

With this being our first winter in Shanghai, we really didn't know what to expect. From what I had heard, temperatures below freezing are rare and snow is even rarer. Before Christmas, we were having temperatures up in the 50's but we've been hanging right above freezing for the last couple of weeks. We've also had quite a bit of rain and an occasional sighting of snow.

We woke Saturday to more rain, which turned into a mix of rain and snow by noon. Temperatures were still warm enough that it wasn't sticking to anything but rooftops. So even though the weather was crappy, we decided we wanted some good American food so we headed over to Puxi for a late lunch at Tony Roma's.

Along the way, we saw a new traffic camera being installed. Almost all traffic law enforcement here is done with cameras. You never see anyone pulled over for speeding. Instead, they catch you on camera and write you a ticket. I don't know if it's true but someone told me that they don't even bother mailing the ticket to you. It's a driver's responsibility to periodically check with the police to see if he has any outstanding tickets. Most of cameras are fixed at high traffic areas, such as the highway to the airport, so a lot drivers know where they are. So to keep people on their toes, the police periodically move some cameras around.

Weekend traffic is always bad here (for that matter, weekday traffic is too) but it's getting even worse now leading up to Chinese New Year. Pretty much everywhere you go right now, you end up sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. For example, Kristi went to the Bund Thursday, which is only about five miles from our apartment. A trip that usually takes 30 minutes took more than an hour. Saturday was no different.

One thing they have here that's kind of neat is these signs over the highway that alert drivers to road conditions ahead (see the green sign in the picture). Unlike in the States, where the signs are just in text, here they have a graphic of the road and upcoming exits. If a particular ramp starts backing up, its color will change from green to yellow - or red if it gets real bad. Notice how that even though we're creeping in stop-and-go traffic, the sign indicates mostly green, with one yellow ramp. I guess like everything else, traffic congestion is all relevant.

So anyway, to bring this wandering post full circle, when we got up this morning we actually had snow on the ground. If you listen closely, you can almost hear Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

I'll soon be there with snow

I'll wash my hair with snow

And with a spade of snow

I'll build a man that's made of snow

I'd love to stay up with you

but I recommend a little shuteye

Go to sleep

And dream

Of snow

Fresh Meat

I told you the Chinese like their meat fresh. I took this picture over in Puxi this afternoon. At least the weather's cool. However, this is how they also do it in the middle of summer. Evidently it works. Like I keep telling myself, "Not wrong, just different."

The Good and the Bad, Part 2

Refrigerators. First, the bad. The refrigerators here are small. The Chinese aren't real big on refrigeration. Instead of keeping groceries on hand, they prefer to shop daily, picking up just enough for that day's meals. They think that anything more than a day or two old should be thrown out. Our ayi (housekeeper) is always freezing stuff before we can use it. If I buy some chicken Thursday aiming to grill it Saturday, I'll find it in the freezer Friday.

Really the only good thing about the refrigerators is that we have two of them. And the doors have hinges on both sides and will open from the left or the right. OK, maybe it's not a good thing but it's kind of cool.

Oh yeah, one more bad thing. As you recall from an earlier post, we can't drink the tap water here so the refrigerators don't have a conventional icemaker like we're accustomed to in the States. Since they can't be connected to the water line, ours here have a container that we fill with bottled water (you can see it in the lower left of the bottom picture). Water is sucked out of this reservoir into the icemaker in the freezer. It's not very fast and you have to continually remember to refill it but it works.

Spotted at Ikea

GI Joe, all decked out in camo and stars and stripes. I don't know what his deal is but he was more than happy to smile for the camera.

Everybody Talks About, No One Does a Thing About...

Evidently we brought some of the Ohio Valley weather back to Shanghai. Before we went home to the States for Christmas, we'd had only a couple of mornings with temperatures down in the 40's but since we returned, it's been nasty. Temperatures have been near freezing and the fog was so heavy it closed the airport for a couple of days. We even had a little snow Thursday but it was very light and everything was still too warm for it to stick. Then we got a little drizzle Friday afternoon that turned into a steady rain that has been falling all weekend. I guess I shouldn't be complaining though because I just looked and saw that it's 4 degrees in Madison right now.

Kristi has been helping lead a small group for pre-teen girls. They usually meet at our house but this weekend, they - along with a boys group - went to an orphanage outside of Shanghai. They took a load of supplies, including diapers, toys, and candy. I'll have some more pictures up soon.

Mike Dattilo

Many of the visitors here know Kristi's brother, Mike, and know that 2007 was not a good year for him. For those who aren't aware, Mike contracted Goodpasture's Syndrome last summer. Goodpasture's is an autoimmune disease that attacks the organs and it really did a number on Mike's kidneys. He spent several weeks in a coma, followed by rehab before he was finally discharged in October. A couple of weeks later, he suffered a stroke that put him back in a coma for another month. At that time, the doctors didn't know the full extent of the damages but they said that if Mike lived, there was a good chance that he would be blind, unable to speak, and partially paralyzed.

When we arrived on Dec. 20, Mike was still at Jewish Hospital in Louisville. If I had to describe his condition, it would have been "good, not great." His vision was fine and he was talking non-stop (just like normal, huh?). However, he had practically no movement on his left arm and leg. He was bed-ridden and taking all his nutrition thru a tube directly to his stomach.

On Dec. 26, Mike moved to a rehab facility in Indianapolis and the change has been amazing. Within a few days, he was sitting in a wheelchair and feeding himself. The facility tries to get the patients back to some type of normalcy so they require that he be dressed everyday and he has to take his meals in the lunchroom. He has started physical, occupational, and brain therapies and continues to improve. He reads the newspaper and has started doing puzzles. A few days ago, he stood (with assistance) for one minute and he can now lift his left leg. It may not sound like much but these are huge improvements.

Mike still has a long way to go. It will be months before he can go home. In the meantime, he has a lot of gruelling rehab to go thru. If you can, please send him a card letting him know he has people pulling for him. Even if you don't know him, send him a note introducing yourself and just say Hi. His address is:

Mike Dattilo

Community Hospital East

c/o Hook Subacute Rehab

Bldg 1, 3rd Floor

1500 N Ritter Ave

Indianapolis, IN 46219

We're back...

OK...we're back from our visit to the States. I intended to post something here earlier in the week but the jet lag has been killing us. We were in the US just long enough to get our internal clocks adjusted and it's been a real struggle to get turned around. We were hitting the wall around 4PM everyday and we were all in bed by 8. Then, of course, we were up at 2AM. It's getting better but we're not quite fully recoverd. I read once that the adjustment takes one day for every time zone. If that's the case, we've got another week to go.

It was great to celebrate Christmas with family and to catch up friends. We've been gone for only 5 months but in some ways it seemed longer. Another good thing about going home was how easy things are there. I'm often asked what is the worst thing about living in China and my response is always the language barrier and how difficult it can be to communicate. So many times, things that should be easy become almost impossible. Like trying to tell Shen Bo when to pick us up at the airport. Prior to leaving, I had given him our itenary with dates and flight numbers and thought we had it all sorted out. Then, while we're loading our bags to head for the Cincinnati airport, I receive a text message from him telling me that he has been waiting for us at the Pudong airport. The whole misunderstanding was cleared up with a phone call but this is just a small example of how we waste a lot of time and effort on simple things.

This trip home also made us realize how much our perspective has changed in a short time. If you've been reading all the posts here, you've seen me describe how everything here is so crowded and there is no personal space (I actually counted one day and we had 22 people in an elevator at my office). So when everyone was complaining about how crowded the malls were and how bad traffic was, we were thinking, "Gee, there's not many people out today."