The Rainbow Bridge

I thought I'd show you all some pictures of our surroundings here in XuHui district.
The suburb is built around an old Jesuit mission. Somewhere inside the backstreets stands the Saint Ignatius Loyola Catholic Library. Magnificent, I'm told, though I've yet to find it. Read on for what we have found so far...

Our apartment compound lies just off Hong Qiao road, a standard-massive-eight-lane-super-concourse (plus bike lanes!). Hong Qiao means 'Rainbow Bridge'. Home is Building 2, one of four 20-storey, oldish residential blocks. I figure the pale green walls hide the aircon gutter sludge better than grey.



After the chaos and clattering of the New Year celebrations, we saw a wedding procession leave from our building. The red tatters on the ground are remains of firecrackers. Lots and lots of them. That had been going all night.



The compound's community notice board says "Celebrating the Spring Festival"


The local market has piles upon piles of fresh fruit and vegies for sale. Purchasing it usually requires hagglings skills Natalie and I have yet to fully develop.



On the other side are salty pancake stalls, some small specialty grocers, a 7-11 and a sort of noodle shop without cooking facilities (DIY cha mian).



This super-mega-Hong Qiao road out the front...



And a quiet lane at the back...



Ten minutes walk up the road lies the commercial titan intersection, Xu Jia Hui:



Click any of the pictures above to start viewing the full album, or click this link here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jim.yeah/XuHuiDistrict/

In other developments, Nat bought a new phone, I bought a non-stick pan and we joint-purchased a little digital camera. I'm off home now to see how Nat did at her first day at work.

Settling In

Just thought I'd let you know what we'll be doing for the next 6 months.
James will attend East China Normal University and learn Chinese. We've been over to the campus to get some forms and it looks quite nice, it has gardens and little lakes and it is quite big. It's only five stops away on the bus from our new house.
I've signed a contract for part time teaching work with a recruitment agency that will send me out to a few different public schools in Shanghai. I will be teaching oral English, and the students will have a native Chinese English teacher to teach them reading and writing. We are both quite nervous about starting, but we have a week off now, which we're pretty excited about!
We've moved away from the area that had our favourite vegetarian restaurant, but luckily we have our own kitchen to cook in now. I think some of the locals think we are quite wierd when we ask for meals without meat, it seems like the only reason you wouldn't eat meat here is if you were buddhist, which I am not. They also seem to think we are strange when we want to re-use our shopping bags.
We're quite happy that our local nieghbourhood has a bakery that sells non-sweetened bread (a rarity), as well as a pirate DVD shop with lots of English language DVDs. Yesterday we bought five seasons of Six Feet Under for $4. Actually, it was probably about $3.50 after James did a spot of bargaining.
We got a good laugh out of the DVD covers. Plenty of effort has gone in to replicating the real deal, but with some hilarious differences. Better than simply finding copious 'engrish', the official-looking blurbs have been copied off IMDB and Amazon reviews! Half the time they pay out the story or the actors in a whiny film student manner. Awesome.
We're quite glad to have a DVD player because when we went to see a film at the movies, the only English ones showing was Casino Royale (enjoyable, but we've already seen it) and A Night At The Museum (hmmmm). Have to wait a whole month until The Devil Wears Prada comes out, and we already found the previous tenant's pirate copy in our apartment anyway.

Neue haus!

Hallo! We have moved into our new home! V. excited. It is spacious but vaguely 80's Chinese/German, oweing to our landlords - a local Shanghainese and her German expat husband. We cleared away the dusty wreath, plastic gourds and rubber angel as soon as we'd paid the bond. But it is clean and in a good spot near a local market with lots of public transport, and not too far from the city centre. AND we have a spare room if anyone wants to come and stay with us! Click below for a bit of a peek...

newhome

We both got a little stressed out earlier this week, as we were supposed to register our presence with the police within 72 hours of our arrival. The scheming hostel manager would not give us the documents to do this unless we signed up for another month. Bitch! So we were very relieved that we liked the first place we looked at and were able to move in the very next day! Ama, our landlady, helped us out with the police, she seems to know them and just about everyone else in the neighbourhood so that was handy for us. So now we can enjoy the New Year's festivities without having to worry about being deported. The fireworks have already started to go off at random times, day and night. Sometimes it almost drowns out the ever-present car horns...

Lucky landing

Here we are, then!
Continuous strokes of luck have seen us delivered safely into our new temporary home. Not having a key for the place, we followed a fellow into the builing (good timing) and then, with the help of the cleaner, managed to find the unmarked door of our hostel. Beyond the entrance lay a fairly new, if slightly grotty set of rooms.

We've been exploring the local area on foot. Luck struck again as we found an organic vegetarian restaurant just around the corner. Don't know how authentic it is, but there you are.

We'd both like to relax a bit more, but there are some pressing issues. Nat must decide whether to sign a six month teaching contract, or hang around and investigate other employment opportunities as they present themselves.
We're no closer to finding long-term accomodation yet, either. Though the Singaporean lass who runs the hostel reckons she's looking for a tenant to take over her place. It's a tempting offer, since it's pretty close to the swank French Concession.

Hope we can show you all some pics soon!
Zai jian!

Farewell gallery

All the lovely people! Where do they all come from?
Thanks all who came and enjoyed the bash. Now have a good soft look at yourselves:

goodbye_party

Welcome to our humble blog

Today is our going away party at our Northcote house. In one week we will be off to Shanghai! James will be starting uni on the 26th of February, and I, Natalie, don't really know what I'll be doing. I have been offered a job that sounds really good and pays well without too many hours, but it is over 70 kilometres from where James will be studying. I'm thinking about taking it anyway, and one of us will commute between the two places. It has an equestrain centre in the town, so that could be the clincher!
We're both looking forward to eating yummy Chinese food- mmm, dumplings and juicy buns- but we're taking a jar of vegemite as back up anyway. For some reason I always want vegemite when I'm overseas and can't get it.
So, party tonight. As one of my good friends likes to say, it's going to be a cracker of a night! Yeeha!