Shanghai - part 1

By the way, the Blogger site is in Chinese until I log in - then it reverts to English. We use Google Translate to (obviously) translate the Chinese into English. That is how we had to get some information when we made some of our travel arrangements since many websites didn't have descriptions in English.

FYI...you can click on the photos for a larger image.

Shanghai has two areas: Pudong ("east of the river") and Puxi ("west of the river"). We are staying with John's cousin Ron and his family (wife Ellen; children Joey [9], Cara [7], and Molly [5]) in Pudong. They have a driver, Steven, since they are not allowed to drive - and Steven knows English and is a great help in getting around and translating. Their housing community has a Spanish villa theme and is a bit surreal since it doesn't look like anything else in the city. The photo to the right was taken just steps from where the kids catch the school bus.



Today John, Ellen, and I went to Puxi to see the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. It has a wonderful scale model of Shanghai which takes up most of the floor. The photos cannot convey the vast size and impressive detail.



The 2010 World Expo is being held in Shanghai and there was an exhibition about it. There is also an enormous amount of construction going on to expand the subway system (from 5 lines to 11!) and (re)build the area for the expo along the Huangpu River. The mascot for the event is named Haibao and looks like a blue Gumby.
I am having difficulty with getting the photos uploaded where I want in the blog so I may have to post more than one entry per day. I am done messing with the photos right (ie. don't have the patience to continue right now). We have half an hour before dinner - their housekeeper is making some typical Chinese dishes for us tonight. I am looking forward to trying some authentic Chinese home-cooking!