Trip to Zhujiajiao

I know, I can't pronounce it either. Today Mandy and I went on a company sponsored trip to Zhujiajiao, hailed as "The Venice of China" (we've been to two other towns boasting the same). This one was the least impressive of them all. At least we had friends with us to make the time pass quickly. It was about an hour and a half west of Shanghai by bus. The company paid for everything, so we can't really complain.

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Birthday Week

As Mandy's birthday drew closer I began to panic! It was certainly going to be difficult buying her a gift - we're together almost all of the time. I had absolutely no clue of what to get her. Then I remembered that she was going to buy a friend's guitar and start taking lessons. The friend ended up selling her guitar to someone else, so there was my idea! A friend of mine at work (Tim Kao) is in a local band and has a friend who owns his own music store. He set everything up for me and I got a great guitar for the birthday girl. She was very surprised. I also managed to get her a cake - I scored big points this birthday.

The weather was warm this weekend, so we took a trip downtown with friends to spend our Saturday. You can catch some of our adventures in the pictures below.

Mandy loves cake! I managed to surprise her with a "real" cake. The average Chinese cake tastes like styrofoam - I got a chocolate brownie cake at one of our favorite restaurants.

I was extremely jealous when Mandy told me that her class field trip was to the Shanghai Zoo - it certainly sounded better than our Shanghai GM field trip last week. But then I imagined trudging around a zoo with 20 first graders - ugh. It sounds like they had a good time - nobody was lost or eaten.

These types of fashion shows are common all over Shanghai. This one attracted a particularly large crowd.

It's a secret over here, but my friend Brian Bates is, in fact, The Burger King. Don't tell anyone.

One of the best security systems I've ever seen. I was walking downtown with my friend Brian when we saw this wall covered in bits of broken glass. The pieces of glass are cemented right into the top of the wall to prevent people climbing on them. Everything from broken beer bottles to pieces of mirrors were there! Nice use of resources!

Our beloved Mexican restaraunt in Shanghai - Taco Bell Grande. The waitresses greet you with a friendly "hola" but that's the extent of their Spanish. Pretty good food though.