ok, the rest of day 2

Today started off with the government issued health exam. Nothing too exciting to report except that i was poked and prodded in every way possible, all at once. The center was full of foreigners, half naked covered in white robes, moving from room to room getting different exams completed in each one. Radiation, blood drawn, ultrasound, respiratory check, visual body check and eye exam were all included. I'm glad that only has to be done once.

Finally getting to work, it was another quiet day at my new office...not one meeting on the calendar. I don't think i've had 2 uninterupted days of solid work in years. I got so much done. Also, I had 2 teammates let me join them for lunch of rice noodles in broth.

      Micheal on the left and Oliver on the right                                                                  My beef noodle

This is my walk from the office to the subway...

I also wandered around until i found the track that you could see in the picture of the view from my apartment. This track is in high use b/c there is no way you could walk/run the streets of Shanghai for exercise. I'm going to head back here for a long run in the morning.

Now to the rest of my supermarket trip; Trisha, let me tell you how much more intimidating this place was compared to our trip to Fubonn. This was not a huge market, maybe the size of New Seasons, yet took me about 1 1/2 hours to navigate. There were so many unidentifiable items, barely any English and SO many ppl out shopping for groceries on a Friday at 8pm. A couple of things that stood out 1) i actually found a few items labeled organic, mostly dried goods but a few vegetables 2) i couldn't get myself to buy rice from the HUGE bulk bins b/c i couldn't get past the bugs crawling in it (so not joking i could see bugs moving in the rice), i opted for the vacuumed sealed organic brown rice that costed me an arm and a leg, but heck, it's on Columbia so why not?! 3) I realize that I will be cooking vegetarian at home due to the raw meat being exposed for everyone to handle and not properly chilled...i'm going to seek out another shop to possibly buy meat from.

4) All fruits and vegetable need to be weighted, bagged and tagged prior to checkout. Each bag is then sealed so that you can't add or delete any items from your bag, see picture to the right. Something that I didn't know is the that these supermarkets do not provide bags for you to put your groceries in at the end. Luckily, i was armed with a backpack and huge purse. One also has to pack their own groceries super fast so that you can pay and get out of the way for the next person. I wasn't ready for this and was fumbling my items into the backpack...this is where the nice middle aged women came into play...she helped me get everything packed up so i didn't hold up the line.

 In the end I had a successful trip, got some cooking essentials, spices, oil, salt, pepper, sugar, soy sauce...all things that I'll need to make some basic dishes

Trisha's mystery item:

I know it's some kind of meat with rice packed around it. 

it's frozen

i think it's wrapped in a banana leaf

How to cook it? i don't know

What kind of meat? i don't know

Missing all my friends and family,

Krista