Since the Georgia travel group, that I was planning on meeting, was off touring on Saturday we each took a nice long hot shower in our shiny tub with great water pressure and really big towels to dry off with. (The shower alone was worth their nightly hotel rate) Then we had rice noodles for breakfast and caught the metro to a station on the outskirts of the Pudong district. There we met an old college roommate of Cynthia’s. Sunny & Bob (their English names) picked us up in their new Buick and drove us to their flat.
Side Note: Driving and owning a car is starting to become more popular with the middle class families, especially if you live outside the big (Atlanta sized or larger) cities. Cars, licenses, tags and gas are much more expensive here than in the US.
The flat was a modern 3 bedroom, 2 bath downstairs apartment about the size of my home 100 sq meters (about 1100 sq ft). One bedroom was for the husband’s parents who are the main caregivers of their new baby boy. As is normal in China, both parents work with all childcare being done by the grandparents. Bob and his mother did most of the cooking for our lunch of duck soup (yes, with all parts of the duck), chicken wings (hard to eat with chopsticks), scrambled egg and tomato, qing cai (dk green leafy vegetable – I don’t know the English name because it’s nothing I recognize, but I like it) and of course rice. They were so nice to me even though they had never laid eyes on me before. It still amazes me how hospitable the Chinese are.
When we got back to Shanghai we walked to the Magnificant Hotel where the Georgia group was staying, unfortunately the receptionist said they wouldn’t be back from their tour till after 9. So we had bowl of noodles for dinner and a McDonalds ice cream for dessert. The best of both worlds.
