Quiet Monday

As most of you know, Donald is visiting me in Shanghai starting this Friday. We have 3 1/2 days together before he needs to head back to Vietnam for work. Since Donald and I have never traveled together in China we decided to do a day excursion to a city East of Shanghai, called Suzhou (if you want to pronounce it correctly, "Sue Jo"). We will be taking the train there next Monday during the big Chinese National Holiday. B/c we are traveling during the holiday it is best to buy the train tickets in advance to guarantee that you can get on the train so after work my awesome co-worker, Oliver, walked with me to the train station, stood in line to then find out that you can only buy train tickets 6 days in advance, so they were only selling tickets up till Sunday :( Not a total wasted trip as on the way to the Metro we had to take a bus...my FIRST bus ride in Shanghai. I took pics for all my bus-riding friends to compare with PDX buses. Really about the same but not as many seats, more space for standing. Check it out!

For dinner I ate a fruit that is very uncommon in the US, Dragon Fruit. It's the size of a softball, oblong like a football and the taste/texture is a lot like a Kiwi Fruit with less acidity.

 I look forward to eating Dragon Fruit whenever I come to China.

P.S. I got my first postcard from Trisha today. It has the best cheesy Oregon picture on it possible...LOVE IT! Just in case anyone else feels like writing to me I will never turn down snail mail (or homemade jam, wink wink Mom and Trisha!).

Krista McLellan

c/o Somerset Xu Hui

No. 888 Shaanxi Nan Rd.

Xu Hui District, Shanghai

200031 CHINA