We are getting settled!

Well, we have been in Shanghai for almost two weeks and things are beginning to settle down a little. The first week was a buzz of activity. We arrived on Tuesday night and then on Wednesday had to go to our new house for the "orientation" and to receive the keys and such. The villa that we will be living in is brand new and has never been lived in so it needed curtains. The landlord sent a woman over with books of fabric and in the midst of all the mayhem, I had to choose curtains for all the rooms of the house. I'm grateful I got to pick the curtains but it was quite a task since I had no idea what the furniture would look like, etc. As part of living in a new house, the landlord gave us a furniture allowance to choose furniture for the house because they like to rent them furnished. Since it was only our first day in Shanghai, I obviously had no idea what the furniture was going to look like so I did the best I could with the curtains.

The next few days were filled with various house appointments and trying to find furniture at furniture stores. It was great because we found a nice big furniture "store" with five floors of different shops but no one spoke English. Amazingly enough, we were able to get most of what we need ordered and it will be delivered in a couple of weeks. In the mean time we are staying across the street from our housing complex in a temporary apartment. This apartment is in a complex that has almost all expats so it has been good to be able to meet some people. Our complex is mostly Chinese with a few expats thrown in.

We are currently staying on the 7th floor and the view is absolutely beautiful out our balcony. It is such a surreal feeling looking out and realizing that this is our new home - our new city. It is so massive but already we are starting to feel a little sense of normalcy and familiarity. Here's a picture from tonight so you can see what I mean about the massiveness of it all. You can see all the buildings of downtown Shanghai (Pudong side) in the background. In the foreground are villas similar to what we will live in.
I don't know if you can see it in this picture very well but way out in the distance is the Shanghai World Financial Center. It is the tallest building in Asia (right now - a taller one is being built somewhere but I can never remember where). It is so tall - unbelievable really. The funny thing is the top of it looks like a bottle opener so that is what we call it now. You can see it if you look close just to the left of the sun.

In the midst of all the appointments, we have also gotten to have some fun. We went down to the promenade on the river and saw the Bund. Shanghai is divided by a river and there is the Pudong side (where we live) and the Puxi side which is the "old" Shanghai. Pudong is the newer side as it has just been developed in the last 15 years. Yes, all those buildings you see in the picture above have been built in the last 10-15 years - it's amazing really!
I don't know if you can tell from the picture but Kate looks like she has been in quite a fight with her eye almost swollen completly shut. She got a mosquito bite right under her eye and it made her eye huge! Poor thing - she looked terrible but thankfully after 2 days it finally got back to normal. Anyway, it was a fun night walking along the promenade looking at all the bright lights of the city.

The girls have started their language school. The big girls go everyday from 10-12 to Chinese lessons and seem to be enjoying it. Our driver has been teaching me lots of useful phrases but I'm hopeful to start some formal lessons soon. For those that might not know, we are not allowed to drive here in China so we have a driver to take us wherever we need to go. The driving is SO different in China that I'm sure I would not want to drive. Our driver is a 27 year old single guy that speaks really good English and has been so helpful for us this past week! He has helped us navigate so much and it's great because he knows where most everything is. I'm so thankful to have him but there is definitely a sense of some lost freedom when you are not able to just hop in the car and go somewhere, especially in the evenings when we Leo has gone home. I will be glad to get my bicycle once our goods arrive and at least have that as an option.

One other thing and then I'll go. We had a great time watching the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. We had been at the grocery store right before it started and on our way home we saw fireworks going off in several places around Shanghai. Once we got home, we turned on the tv and watched it on CCTV - in Chinese of course. We couldn't understand any of it but at least we could see it! Leah and Lauren really loved watching it and loved that we had just seen the Bird's Nest a couple of weeks before. Here they are watching...
Well, I have gone on for way too long but this is the first chance I have had to really update the blog. Our goods are supposed to arrive in Shanghai's port on Monday so you can all pray for us that it gets through customs quickly and is able to be delivered to our house! It will be nice to be able to begin that process of getting settled.

I'll post more soon!