I went to Shanghai. It was neat.

I will let this picture sum-up my feelings about Shanghai.

We were visiting Jaclyn's college roomate, Nicole, who is living in Shanghai getting an MA in design.  She lives in a very tall apartment.



It's really nice.

 I threw like 15 paper airplanes out of there.  Sorry, Gaya, I just didn't know when I'd have another chance to throw paper airplanes from 300 feet.  (Also, did you know that paper cranes are perfectly balanced and if you throw one from 300 feet it will float gently to the ground without flipping over?  Who'da thunk it?)



The view at night is cool.

 Shanghai has amazing architecture.  It feels like being in a future city.  Check out the skyline.

That mondo river is the Bund.  On one side is the future city, seen here, and directly behind is a bunch of colonial looking buildings.  The view at night is even better.



Neat

 This ranks right up there amongst the best vistas I have ever had the good fortune to behold. And I think that is saying something, I've seen a lot of vistas.  (Please forgive my braggadocio, I'm just trying to convey how spectacular it is.)  Here's another view:
 

Double neat.

 Here's one more example of some cool architecture.  There really were amazing buildings everywhere.  The place is truly an architect's wet-dream (sorry, graphic).

Can you feel the qi flowing?

But not everything was super-mod.  There was a radical garden called YuYuan with this cool bridge built on rocks and lots of excellent architecture of a more classical nature.



Garden



Building

We went to a really cool club, it was really fun.  Well, first we went to the "Obama Club," and it was empty, creepy, and (I'm pretty sure) a strip club.  And when I see empty, I mean literally empty.  They let us in just to look, then when we took a picture they kicked us out.

The poles are a dead give-away.

Then we went to another club called, "Rich Baby," which was really fun.  Can you tell by our gleeful faces?

This is Jaclyn's favorite picture.

There are also some killer dumplings in Shanghai.  We went to this place packed with locals where you could watch them cook through a steamy window.  The process is amazing, and takes way more people than you'd think.  In assembly line fashion, they cranked out, by my estimation, at least one dumpling per second.  Maybe faster even, there hands were literally a blur.  That could have been the condensation, though.

Hold still, I'm trying to take a picture.

They also have this really fast maglev train in Shanghai.  Needlessly fast really.  But it's the world's first, and it's kind of fun.  And it levitiates on magnets (hence maglev, Nicole).  Everyone was taking pictures of and filming this thing while we accelerated.

That's 268 mph.  Why does it go so fast?  Because it can.



And I'll leave you with this picture I took of a stairwell, because I think it's cool.

 



New friend

So I'm back to life in Korea, and things are settling back into the old routine.. teaching all day, having kimchi and rice lunches, playing soccer (or as I've come to call it thanks to the British influence, "footy,") and hanging out in my favorite Daegu locale (Costco, duh).  Things were going along swimmingly, and it looked like it would be a term much like the last, then she happened (cue foreboding music):




















         (This space is inserted to help build the tension.)




































      (Is it working?)
























    (Probably not if you have a really big monitor.)



















    (Here it comes!)

AAAHHHHHH!

I was walking home from this little Korean joint called Starbucks, through the urban farm behind my house (see earlier posting) when I heard this pathetic little squeaking.  I looked around, and saw this little rascal trying to get to me through some thick weeds.  She was so small that she kept stumbling and getting stuck in the brush.  Well, I couldn't just go about my business in the face of such desperation, so I grabbed her and took her around to the neigbouring houses.  Everyone told me they had no idea where she'd come from, and I couldn't just leave her in the farm/trash heap, so she ended up in my apartment.

I was going to write about my vacillations, my doubt, my turmoil about having a pet in a studio apartment in a foreign country, how she'd undoubtedly put a hitch in my travel plans (i.e. world domination), be an added and unneccessary cost, and how she'd be bored in my apartment all day.  While all those things are likely true, I started writing this blog over a month ago (oops).  And in that month, she's grown on me a lot (and grown a lot physically.  She's more than doubled in size according to the vet).  It's come to the point where I can't imagine parting from her, even though she keeps me up all night and likes to destroy things in my apartment (boredom thwarted).  Fact is, I think I love the little rascal.  So, welcome to the family Goa!