We have arrived!

It has been 5 days, and we have managed to get a lot accomplished. So many new and wonderful things. I will try and begin at the start.

The plane ride went very well. We left our house in St. Louis at 5:45 on Tuesday morning, and actually had to go back twice for forgotten items - a computer and glasses! Too early to remember it all. We had spent two days packing and repacking, trying to fit everything for a year into one roller and one duffel each. We finally got an extra duffel which helped carry the sunscreen, bugspray, books, germex, deodorant, toothpaste . . . . . . . for a year. We made it and they didn't even weigh our bags at the airport after all our careful weighing, repacking and redistributing. The day flight was easy. We spent 14.5 hours from Chicago to Shanghai watching movies, reading, the girls played DS games, and eating. No one slept for more than 2 hours, and we were there: 1pm Wednesday afternoon. No glitch in customs, finding all our bags or finding our driver of a minivan. Jojo and our landlord's representative were awaiting us at the house to begin filling us in on how it all works. We needed to register with the local police within 24 hours, and Jojo did that for us. Arriving in 90% humidity and about 90 degrees, we quickly figured out how to get the room air-conditioners running. Each room has its own remote control for a unit that sits high up on the wall. We have a refrigerator and stove/oven in our one person kitchen which is not very common. There is even a freezer so we can make ice! We have a water cooler and we are delivered two bottles of water every week by a man on a bicycle who carries more than just our two bottles! Amazing what can be put onto a bike: a family of five, huge bundles of recycling, boxes larger than the bike and driver together. (I will learn soon how to post pictures of some of these wonderful sights.)

There are expats from many countries here, and the majority of them live either in high rise buildings that provide a gym and all kinds of amenities, or there are compounds further out west that have houses, parks, grass - western living. When we were looking for a house in January we decided against these areas for the sake of living among the Chinese, in the city. We have what is called a Lane House. In a city block there are various "alley's" that are gated which are called lanes. There is someone always in a little room right at the gate who watches who comes and goes, opens the gate when needed. The larger gate which would allow a car in is closed at night. For our house, we enter the lane, go two lanes and turn right, which is now only wide enough for pedestrians, bicycles and scooters (we had to carry all our luggage from this point), go one lane and turn left, two lanes and turn right and we are on the left. We have the complete luxury of a large patio off the dining room and living room that is surrounded by potted bamboo. We also have two rooftop terraces that overlook the tiled rooftops of the surrounding lane houses. Part of the negotiations for the house gave us outdoor furniture for upstairs and the patio, 2 flat screen tv's, cable with HBO, ESPN, cartoon network, Nickolodeon, Stars and more. More American influence than we were expecting or wanting! We have happily watched some movies while trying to stay up and get on this time. We seemed to have made the transition completely now. We love our street. Our corner has a market, a steamed bun shop with every kind of conceivable steamed bun, a street vendor selling thick pancakes stuffed with greens and onions, a hardware store that is so small and packed with everything imaginable, dusty and dirty. We asked for a hammer and after a bit of rummaging we received a brand new hammer for $0.80. We have found the most amazing restaurants with just blocks of us, a dumpling store two blocks away (we have to walk past a Starbuck's to get there!), an English book store on our block that provides wonderful ice cream as well as books, a nail salon on each end of the street (the girls have already used their services!), clothing stores everywhere, one of which both girls have found must have dresses. They are learning to bargain and the woman has already cut the price in half. We are not done, yet. There are fruit and flower shops everywhere and at night the street sellers come out with loads of DVD's and jewelry for sale. The hotel where we stayed in January is only two blocks away, and we have a young man there who helps us with almost anything we could want: i.e. train tickets, Olympic soccer tickets (we just got tickets to a soccer match that cost as much as one ticket we had purchased over the internet while still in the States.).

It takes time to create relationships, and once someone has a relationship, they begin to offer more or do business. Jojo has been wonderful to us, telling us where to go, what to do, translating for the work needed around the house. When we needed the telephone company here to hook us up, he was here within an hour of calling him. The cable guys were here within two hours and hooked up the new satelllite dish. We had torrential rains last night and it started leaking in the girls room. We emailed Jojo, and at 8 this morning the landlord was here with a worker looking at it. They will be back tomorrow to fix it. It is so incredibly efficient here.

We have had some wonderful adventures. We needed to outfit our house with kitchenware, linens, etc., and we were told over and over that IKEA was the place to go. It was