Last weekend

So my genius collegues(the boys) left my camera at work, but I have to tell about my wonderous weekend without visual aid.

Beautiful saturday sunshine welcomed me to work to do a photoshoot for work! More because I speak english than anything, I aided my supervisor communicate with little kiddies (babies-2 yrs) on new products and prototypes. It was a lot of fun, tho a bit chaotic! I got to chat with the parents as well, and found out that both our moms were chinese born and raised in chicago! The kid were absolutely a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e!!!! They fought a bit, but they were in a wonderland of toys. trikes, swings, ball pits, slides.... the list goes on. After a certain point, no one wanted to go in the ball pit, so then I kinda got in it and was like, "OH I'm having SO much fun!" and then the photographer took a picture of me and so my co-workers all got a good laugh out of it.

After that, my roomie J and I hopped down to the URBN hotel to en Eco design fair- which was about 20 vendors selling mostly bamboo-ey consumer products. The URBN hotel touts being the first carbon neutral hotel in shanghai. One of the highlights was the BBQ- like a real american grill with sausages and hamburgers- with ketchup and mustard! yumm! mine managed to get wasabi in it too, and the frank was a little reminicent of bratwurst. It tough to get hot dogs in buns here. Anyhow, bamboo clothes, toys, you name it- and we ended up in a conversation with a man about water filters, and he knew from my accent that I was from cali. He was from San Jose, and actually organizes expat mixers here in shanghai! he talked a lot, and my roomate was like, "Gah. You californians never stop talking!"

So then we enjoyed the weather and walked towards the main street by Jing An, and hear all this American Rap and a huge crowd of people. They were just standing there looking at these two open trailers with clothes (some kinda promo) and there's this DJ spinning american rap which was really kinda funny/odd/entertaining and we walked on to a shady tree area which actually was a park, with a pond, and we ran into our boss and his fie and tiny baby!!!!! the park had a resturant on the pond, so people could dine on the docks, and there was also a small enclosed area with dudes exercising on bars. One had a paddle with ball, another old man was doing kung fu (J was trainging in that for a bit) and two other teens were trying to kung fu, but he kicked so high he fell on his back. ouch! I felt ashamed for him and opted to walked away.

Sunday I took out my friend the purple bike and we ventured out to hong mei lu but I got lost anyhow and found a shoe store where I bought a dress(and tried it out w/o a mirror so then I was taking pictures of myself but since my arm isn't so long, all you see is the big flower print or my nose) I really love biking now, its so much faster than walking! AND i get a cool breeze thru my hair, a bit of exercise, and the excitement of getting hit by a car. Just kidding. I found hong mei lu by accident and had to call J to figure out how to get home and he got mad at me for being so unsafe(or bad directional sense) and reminded me we were getting a visit to fix our apt, so i ran home.

following church in the afternoon, we ate on the rooftop seeing a magnificent view of shanghai, and talking about plans for the holiday, food, inspirational stories, and just fun stuff. I kicked myself for not having my camera that evening, cuz the space was great. open, private, modern but still comfy.