It's not Manchester Center anymore!

"Hi, my name is Jack." Our new full-time driver  met us at the airport in Pudong ( east side of Huangpu River in Shanghai). Another stereotype down the drain ( but not the cliche). Before we left, my friends said, "you'll tower over all the people in China". Well, Jack is 6'3'', have you guys not heard the name Yao Ming! Fortunately, Jack also has pretty good english so we can communicate with him about all the important things. He put us in our shiny new blue van and we were off to downtown Shanghai and to our new home. During our house hunting trip in October, we decided that we wanted to live among the Chinese and not in a ex-pat serviced hi-rise apartment . So we signed up for Chongqing Nan Rd., Lane 205, house 79 ( pictures below). We arrived at about 4pm on December 30, 2009 with our bags and expectations of the adventure. Many people were there at the house trying to finalize some interior work ( in hindsight, this should have been our first hint of trouble-- more on this later) and the realtor was there to get all the final paperwork signed. For some reason we decided that we needed to immediately get back into the van and go shopping at Carrefour's, the major French based supermarket. Crazy, surreal, and worthy of a Tim Leary ode. What are those things moving in the meat department-- is that dinner? More on this later. We finally got back to our house around 9pm, unpacked our bags, made the bed and promptly fell into our new life in China.