China - Day 31, Friday

Today Daniel had his first play date. A classmate's mother called and asked if Daniel could come over after school. Daniel took the bus home with Bryce. Bryce's family lives in Green Villas, which are all houses. Very expensive area, but of course the company pays for it. The dad works for GE. This is their 4th expat assignment. Daniel had a lot of fun riding scooters, and exploring Green Villa.

Randy had to go to Suzhou today. The manufacturing plant, Financial Office and Human Resources are at this site. Suzhou is about 2 hours away from here by car. He was able to take the train to get there which took about half an hour. Randy needed to go there to pick up his work visa and residence permit. We need this to get our shipment. Actually the shipping company needed this three days ago - but Randy's company moves at a snails pace on everything. Daniel and I need to get residence permits also, but we must wait for Randy's to be complete first. Randy also needed to go there to get Richard's contract (our driver) signed. And work on other financial stuff with the financial person.


Our shipment has arrived in China. Now it will take about 5 days to complete the paperwork. Then it will go to customs, which will take anywhere from 5-10 days. I am hoping for 5, planning on 10! So maybe we will have it by Sept 23 - which will be a problem for the wedding! Mind you we shipped on July 8!


Amy and I went to the Bund today. Whenever you see pictures of Shanghai, they are taken from the Bund. It is located on the River that splits Puxi (Randy works on the Puxi side) and Pudong (we live on the Pudong side). We took the subway to Nanjing Road, which is all shopping and no cars are allowed in this area. Many tourists come to this area.

This is the shop we saw when we came out of the subway!

They had a couple of these type statues around the area

Amy liked these trees, they lined the road.The trunk is interesting.
FYI - That's a Starbucks coffee in her hand!

This is a large fish tank with turtles and sharks, It was built into the outside of a building.

There are several of these tree lining the area. They are shaped to look like umbrellas.

We didn't know which way to walk to get to the Bund, so we headed one way, of course it was the wrong way. We turned around and started walking the other way. We stopped and asked someone, who told us to turn right at the lights and we would find it. So we followed the directions and walked and walked. It just didn't feel right, so we finally decided to head back towards the subway (The nice thing about Shanghai is that there are all kinds of street signs showing you were the subway is - once you know what you are looking for!) We ended up back at the Nanjing Rd shopping area and I realized that had we just headed the direction we were originally going we would have ended up at the Bund. While we were walking in the shopping area, Amy complained that there were too many Westerners. So the detour we took led us off the beaten path - I told her "no Westerners!"

This is the view from the Bund. This is looking over to Pudong and the Financial District.

Amy and I

Barges on the river. You can't see them all but there were at least 15 in this area at this time.

We went to Thumb Plaza (that is the Plaza that has Carrefour - my grocery store) for dinner. We ate at an Irish Pub. I had Shepherd's Pie, Amy had a hamburger, Randy had a Club Sandwich and Daniel had Spaghetti (very Irish!). There are many restaurants in this area - you can eat any kind of food you want!