Shanghai, China!

Welcome to Shanghai! Humid, humid, humid was my first impression.
The plane ride was smooth and went as well as expected. Sammy had 3
upgrades to business class, so he and the twins sat there; while Ella,
Eva and I sat in Economy Plus. So we all rotated periodically to
"share the wealth". Eva had some trouble sleeping but finally slept
well in Business Class during a rotation (looks like she's developed a
bad habit for business class at a young age). We arrived around
dinner time, had dinner, and got everyone settled for bed. (Below
continues a bit longer post but shouldn't be so long next time).

Day1: Eva didn't sleep so soundly and got up a few times. In the
morning, we had a hearty breakfast and set out to Carrefour (in French
it's pronounced 'garre-fouur' but in English it's butchered to a nice
'care-four'). Carrefour is like a Super Target in terms of items they
sell - everything - but interior/decor-wise is nothing like a Target.
It's very "loud" is the only way I can describe it. Signs are
blazingly bright and everywhere. Employees - everywhere. We wanted
to buy a few things for the house - microwave, rice cooker, hair
dryer, fan, etc. Wow! There were probably 60 different rice cookers
and like 80 fans. Fan selection went well with an employee's help.
The rice cooker . . . well, that was like a scene from The Apprentice.
One female rep for a rice cooker brand and 2 female employees flew to
me like 'white on rice' and tried to convince me why their's was the
best. Then when I got Sammy involved, 3 males (a different rep/brand
and 2 employees) came and argued why their's was better. At one
point, there were six people surrounding Sammy and speaking all at
once (in Chinese) about advantages to their product. First of all, I
don't know why in H-E-double-toothpicks there are 60 rice cookers?!!!
You just need it to cook rice! Second of all, Sammy's Chinese is not
advanced enough to even understand half the stuff they said at the
speed they were saying (neither was mine at that moment). Anyway, the
females won and they threw in like 3 free items and we negotiated a
hair dryer as well. How's that for buying a plain ol' rice cooker?

After Carrefour we took all our pretty toys to our new house. How did
we get there you ask? Well, we put our foot in our mouth no early
than our first day here and took a taxi. It was some small sedan and
we all fit...without car seats! Sigh! The things you do when you
have no means of transportation and a lot of purchases.

In the evening we went to grab some dinner and buy an air mattress for
Sammy and me. That's when the good day went downhill - and FAST!
First, Eva was ticked that we stopped her nap short in an effort to
help her through jet lag. So she spent the next 2-3 hours telling us
the only way a non-speaking 1 year old can ... by wailing but I'm
pretty sure that wail would've had expletives if she were 20 years
older. Then each kid methodically went down in flames till at one
point, Sammy was with a crying-Eva shopping for groceries (in the
event the typhoon hit us that night) and the girls were head down on
the table at the restaurant sound asleep while Stephen stared into
space. So we took the food to-go, rode the taxi which this time had
no seat belts (ACKKK!) and took 4 sleepy kids back to the hotel.

Day2: Everyone slept till 5am except me (jet lag seems to wake me at
3am every time which I don't understand why because that's about 2pm
Austin time). That's leads me to now, which is us hanging out at the
hotel while Eva takes a nap in hopes we can get her back on
"schedule". Typhoon seems to have not affected us much - just a very
rainy day today.

We miss everyone! Will do shorter posts in the future and thanks for
reading and supporting us! Pictures soon . . . still practicing my
blogging skills. :*)
Melissa
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Melissa