The Locker Room

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  We had our first Christmas in Shanghai and probably our first Christmas without family.  It was nice . . . definitely not as great as spending it with family and friends but good nonetheless as we were all together.  We stayed at a hotel on the Bund (which is the area of town located off the Huang Pu River).  The river divides Shanghai into the Puxi and Pudong sides (i.e., Fort Worth and Dallas or Minneapolis and St. Paul).  So we had a great view of the Pearl Tower and other famous landmark buildings.  At night this area is extremely popular because they light up all the buildings and it's quite beautiful to see.

If you've followed my gym stories...here's my latest episode.  There are about 4 women who tend to workout together and are pretty consistent about going.  One of them was the one who was mixing dough in the locker room one time (previous story).  So a few weeks ago, the "dough girl" I'll call her, befriended me.  The next time I went to the gym, they had taken a break and were eating some cookies and one of the other four offered me one.  (They called them "healthy" cookies because I think they used less sugar and maybe whole wheat and nuts or something).  I really didn't want one but I didn't want them to think I was rude or unfriendly so I tried it and it was actually good.  Later though I realized 'ugh, this is from the group of women who kneaded dough in the gym'. . .

Anyway, each time I hit the gym, we exchange friendly chatter.  Lately though the dough girl seems to finish her workout about the time I do and she stops to chat with me for a few minutes in the locker room.  Innocent except that she chats with me on her way to the shower . . . so she's naked as a jail bird . . . full frontal nudity like we are two moms talking in department store.  It's a good thing she doesn't know English because I'm sure one day my thoughts of "MY EYES!  MY EYES!  Where do I look???!" will actually slip out of my head and out my mouth.

Now for some pics . . . this was a Lamborghini that was near a market I went to.  There is a lot of money flowing through this city . . .

 

Just an example of some Christmas decorations around town.  This was one of the more unique ones.

On my way to a mall, the front entrance of it is a quite large open space and covered where people were dancing at 9am on a weekday.

I'm behind the times so others may already know this but this is the infamous store - French Connection which has a controversial acronym ... they're based in the UK.