Mid-January already?

Sorry for the absence this last week... we've been very busy. After a few days of tolerable, even decent weather (sunny and in the 50's), Shanghai once again plunged into a dreary, bone-chilling cold. Yeah, those of you suffering through a harsh winter in the States, don't even bother with your gripes. You have central heat. When it's 30 degrees here, my bathroom is 30 degrees. My tile floors are 30 degrees. And we still have it pretty good at our place. Most people don't even have room heaters!

My sore throat and cough returned, and I starting feeling fatigued again. Don't worry, it isn't SARS. No fever. But John and I alternated sick days. We are such wusses over here.

In other news, my article appeared in JobWeek last Monday. I hate the front-page picture, but Nai said the article was written alright. I've gotten a few bites from it... I'm in the interviewing stage. One involves working with a young global company doing business in international trading, travel, web services, education, and textiles. The other is a teaching position for area college sophomores. I'm also pushing to expand our network. Many of my contacts in the US know some people in SH, so we've been meeting up with them. One person we met on Friday: Tony Wai, who moved his family to SH in 2001. He heads a consulting/training firm servicing supply management professionals and said he'd be interested in having me develop an English training course to supplement his program. I don't know much about purchasing/supply management work but intend to look into it. Could be a great opportunity offering a lot of control and flexibility (Thanks Andrea!). Mr. Wai also hooked John up with fellow mac enthusiast Kevin. Thanks to Kevin, John will be picking up his 23-inch mac cinema display screen this Tuesday (previously, all the places told us the wait time would be over one month).

Yesterday, we all took the bus down to JiaSan, Nai's birth city. It's only about 90 minutes south of here. We met her younger brother and little sister and their kids. A big family. Visited her parents' grave-- they were born in 1903 and 1904 and passed away in the 1990's.

At lunchtime, we went out to a hotel restaurant in downtown JiaSan. Tasted some specialty foods, including chestnut-like legumes (I think) called Lings (the horned thing pictured to the right), wu xiong jiang ya (soy sauce duck), and turtle-fish. John said the turtle-fish (which looks like a black soft-shelled snapturtle to me) tasted like chicken. He ate two clubby legs with the claws still on them. Ugh!