We have only just been back from our 2 weeks holiday in Cambodia and Koh Samui (which was awesome and I will share with you in the next post) but so much has happened since our return.
First of all when we the taxi dropped us of in front of our door last sunday we were stunned by the looks of our house: It has turned into a building site! The little cafe below our kitchen - which only recently had been turned into an art galery for leather sculptures (whatever that was supposed to be) -has changed owners again and is right now in the process of beeing redbuilt into a new clothes shop.It must be an exclusive store because they are putting a hell of an effort into changing the place.
Walls are torn down, new windows broken trough, the old floor and sealings removed. I don´t know how many containers of dirt they have already drilled out of this little place. The noise is only just bearable (I feel a bit sorry for the baby who apparently can hear since a couple of weeks amd until now was used to listening to the sounds of the ocean from a hammock..) And I´m a bit concerned that one morning we wake up and our kitchen has sunk one floor. There can´t be much left for them to drill out anymore.
Mr. and Mrs. Jing and I hope they stop soon, because the dirt is now also coming throught the windows (and our floor!! wonder how thin it is already??). However the excitement of getting a new neighbour is there and we can´t wait to see what fancy place it is going to be when it is ready.
When we returned from holiday we were also happy to find out that the weather in Shanghai is currently at it´s best. With about 23 degrees Celcius during the day, sunshine and bright blue skies perfect to spend the days outside.
Today I used this nice day to meet up with Vicky, my Chinese teacher. She is no longer my official teacher as I didn´t sign up for another mandarin course with school, but we agreed to continue meeting up every now and then to keep on practising.
Chatting to Vicky is always interessting because besides practising Mandarin it gives me a chance to get some insight into what´s going on in China beyond what I can understand. She has a fairly western view also because she is in a long term relation ship with a French guy. But every time I see her she surprises me with some comments.
Today she told me that she and her boyfriend are considering moving to France for a couple of years to study French. She doesn´t want to go there forever because she feels like the future lays more in China than in Europe. She may not be wrong. However one of the concerns she has was that she heard that Chinese people get robbed by French because they believe Chinese people are rich...
I gently tried to explain to her, that yes, Shanghai is probably one of the safest cities in the world but that if someone wants to robb someone they probably go by whoever shows it most and that this would not be a France related problem. Maybe it is unlucky that the Chinese like luxury handbags and like to show it off. I bet this case was built based on one case and hit the media here.
So I tried to explain this to her based on an example: If a Chinese eats dog and makes the news everyone in the rest of the world thinks all Chinese eat dogs. That made a lot of sense to her. Already because she is tired of explaining to her French relatives that this statement is simply not true (and she is right!)
After 3 hours chatting in the sun at Tianzifang she was keen to show me a new import supermarket where she likes to go shopping. It´s a brand new "City shop" which is one of those import chains here.
Oh my god!! It is sooo nice! It is huge and to me the first supermarket where I felt like I´m going shopping at home (providing I ignore the prices). What a nice selection of cereals, coffe and tea! Cottage cheese and "Quark" on the shelf which is still soo difficutl to find here. But my heart nearly stopped beating when I noticed "Aufbackbrötchen" = Frozen bread rolls for baking before breakfast!!
I have never understood why no one had the idea of importing them before. I almost thought that the local bakeries had some involvement to bann the sales of frozen bakery products. And there - FINALLY! - there they were: propper "Koppenrath und Wiese Dinkelbrötchen" - with about 8EUR for 6 rolls costing a fortune, but worth every penny: Another piece of "normal"life had found it´s way to Shanghai. I could not help it - it made me feel like home.
Still in the supermarket I took a picture of the package and sent it by SMS to all our German friends. The reaction was sheer excitement. I think even the baby started dancing inside of me.
So the weekend is here and somehow for the first time it feels like a normal friday night back home in the "old days". We are not going out, but will enjoy a nice lazy evening in our cosy home and forget about the big city out there. I´m already looking forward to waking up to fresh brewed coffee and the smell of roll in the oven tomorrow morning - providing the kitchen is still standing!
I wish you all a wonderful weekend!
