Day to day life in Shanghai

The past week has been a fairly normal week here in Shanghai.  As Sam is in South Africa I have not been able to go to the gym early in the morning.  Instead I have been leaving William and Oliver with Xiaolan at 9 each morning.  As normal a routine as this sounds there are always surprises in Shanghai!  The first morning I went at 9 it was pretty busy, I got on with my exercise then noticed a man with a tripod and video camera.  He was filming a woman and I thought it might be for a promotion video.  However, he then began to walk around filming everyone!  It was most off putting having him stand behind me filming!  Only in China does this sort of thing seem to happen without any explanation.  Every morning when I have got back, having been gone just over an hour, apparently William and Oliver have been seized with incredible hunger for their easter chocolate!  Although, I think this is more what Xiaolan thinks they want as William said the other day that 'she keeps trying to give me chocolate and I just want a kiwi fruit'!!  However, Oliver kept quiet!

Oliver and William have continued to enjoy a range of Chinese food but dumplings are still a firm favourite and they are now getting very good at eating them with chopsticks!

The weather has been very hot this week with a high of 38 degress so far.  We have been going out in the morning then trying to spend the afternoon somewhere air conditioned!  It has dropped a bit towards the end of the week, with the locals complaining that it is cold at 24 degrees! 

Sam arrived back from South Africa, where he had

been staying in a hotel called The Farm.  It looked beautiful and made the frequency of these business trips make sense!  The boys were delighted with the photos he took of the 'farm' and its animals.

We had a Brits Abroad family afternoon in the Fuxing Park on Sunday.  It was rather hot but a good number turned out and we had a treasure hunt and a game of baseball.  The children were quite enjoying the baseball until the father's took over!

We have been getting very excited about our trip back to the UK and have been packing.  I am a bit concerned that we will have packed according to the heat here and will be heading out for new clothes in Guildford on Monday!  We are looking forward to catching up with friends and family and are especially excited about Matthew and Vanessa's wedding.  Keep an eye out for our first posting from the UK!

Delicious Dumplings

Dumplings are a bit of a Shanghainese delicacy.  All over Shanghai you can have dumplings from the top restaurants to street stalls where you might pay 50p for six!  The traditional Shanghainese dumpling is a steamed soup dumpling which consits of a doughy outer filled with a delicious pork mixture and a soup.  They can be messy to eat and there is skill involved as you suck the soup out before eating the rest.  Needless to say it's quite obvious when Oliver and William have been eating them!  There are then many variations on these, some have different fillings and others have more of a bready outer shell covered with sesame seeds. Some have a sweeter soup which didn't appeal at first but when combined with the wrapper and pork goes very well!   However they come they are delicious!

I was delighted when Xiaolan's friend told me that she makes excellent dumplings.  I asked her to show me how she makes them.  The first time she made them we were away and came home to a freezer full, she was a bit put out that we hadn't eaten them all until I explained that we like to have them every so often and not ten each in one sitting! 

The next time I asked her to make them I said that we wanted to learn.  She made up the pork mixture with minced pork, cabbage and scrambled egg.  Plus the all important ginger!  She doesn't make the wrappers herself they come from a local shop and you buy a big stack of them.  Xiaolan then showed us all how to get a circular wrapper, put some pork in the middle and shape it in to a mini pasty shape. 

We all had a go and just about got the hang of it, although I am not sure ours were quite as neat as Xiaolan's.

 During this dumpling session our gateman delivered us some more water.  He thought it was hilarious that we were all sitting round making dumplings and before we knew what was happening he'd washed his hands and was joining in!  He proceeded to make moneybag shapes - that's how his mother did it!

After about a hour we had a huge amount of dumplings.  They were then frozen.  We had so many that we even cooked up a batch for all of the gatemen and some for Gao Yi!  Oliver and William really enjoyed doing it, although we did have to keep reminding them not to eat the raw pork!  I am sure that once the huge dumpling mountain in the freezer is gone it will be time to make some more.

 

Bank Holiday Weekend

Along with the UK we had a bank holiday here in China this week.  Lots of people took advantage of the long weekend to go off for a holiday but we opted to stay in Shanghai.  William and Oliver had a sports class on Saturday morning and following that we went swimming.  On Sunday we hosted our first bbq in Shanghai.  The weather was perfect and we found a great butcher for the meat.  I made a variety of salads and Sam cooked an excellent bbq, as always. 

Henry, William and Oliver in serious discussion!

We invited over some friends and had a lovely afternoon.  It was slightly interrupted at one point when our neighbours gardener first stood staring at us over the fence and then started strimming all along the fence!

Spot the gardener on the left!

On the bank holiday Monday we had a lazy morning, followed by lunch at the pub.  William and Oliver had a great time on the climbing frame and bouncey castle. 

There is an excellent dvd van by the pub which always has the latest flims, I no longer seem to have the objections to piracy that I had in the UK, so I picked up a few flims (50p each!) including one for that night.  A perfect end to the bank holiday. 

A musical, art adventure (reprise)

Oliver and William have now completed four weeks of music and art classes.  Each class follows a theme for four weeks.  In music they have been doing the weather, ironically the class on snow fell on one of the hottest days of the year so far!

In the story/art class they have been reading 'The Rainbow Fish' and creating a piece of art to do with the story.  On Thursday, they completed their pictures and were allowed to bring their piece of art home.  Well, all of the other children brought theirs straight from the class, but Wiliam and Oliver had to wait another hour as they had used lots of paint!




Both were keen to point out the dried pasta they had stuck on, apparently fish love it!


When I saw their pictures I felt so proud of them as they were fantastic and also quite emotional as it was their first creation done away from home.  They each made a shell with a fish inside!  Oliver and William were both obviously pleased with what they had done and couldn't wait to show them to Sam when he got back from Chonqing.