Full of amazing "lasts"

A fantastic last Friday.

   On Friday I went out to lunch with my manager in Shanghai to talk about my experience and to discuss some areas of improvement in regards to the transition of information from the home office and the liaison offices (or in some cases lack of information). This meant that I wasn't able to head out to lunch with the rest of the team which I think they were hoping for since I had been packing my lunch all week (trying to use up all the food at my apartment!). I came back from lunch to find a nice little gift from Ewgenia. I decided to give her the bike that I purchased instead of trying to sell it. She has been wonderful to me the entire time I have been here and know that she doesn't currently have a bike. It turns out that she was just about to start looking for a second hand bike to buy...perfect timing. Anyways, she was thrilled at the idea of getting mine and wanted to take me out for lunch or dinner as a thank you. But she must of thought that time was ticking down and that she would get a chance so she stopped and got me a fresh yogurt and 2 types of Shanghai style salami (which I hadn't tried yet). It was so nice of her.

   After work Tina and Oliver invited me out for dessert. I thought it was strange that we would go for dessert without getting dinner first but what the heck...dinner isn't really needed, right? They took me to Raffle City which is a mall around the People's Square part of town. It turns out that it is a young couple's mall...it was filled with girls dragging their boyfriends around shopping. Pretty funny! But in the basement level is a giant food court with all sorts of popular Shanghai treats.

This was our destination.

The two large bowls was the Tiawanese dessert that we came for. It would not

do well in the states due to texture alone. It was a bowl of slightly flavored jelly, sweet 

potatoes and different shaped/colored rice gluten pieces all in a slightly sweet sauce.

After dessert I was able to convince Tina and Oliver to get dinner so we went to 

Tina's favorite noodle shop which was also located in Raffle city.

Last but not least we topped all the food we already ate with more food!

This time it was grilled meats, lamb and chicken hearts.

   The rest of my last weekend was pretty quiet as I had a lot of organizing and packing to do. I did make it out for a little more wandering and shopping, making sure that I got to East Nanjing Rd one last time. Plus, this was the sight of the shop that I wanted to buy a couple treats from to bring home.

Monday night... 

I asked if anyone would want to join me for one of my favorite meals, magical cabbage and fried pork.

I really don't know what they do to make these 2 dishes so good but I was glad to eat it one last time.

Today was my last work day...

Like any good Chinese work team, we posed for pictures :)

And again...

And again...

And again! On the far right is Iris, she was doing the exchange in PDX
and just arrived back yesterday.

    We had the last team lunch that I would be around for. It was my job to pick a restaurant but I don't really know where to go. I can't even remember the names or the locations of places they have taken me in the past so I elicited some help. Itold the group that I wanted traditional Chinese food and Tina stepped up and picked a restaurant that she had been to once and really liked. After taxi-ing over there Diana and Tina started ordering all the things on the menu that I hadn't tried yet, plus a few favorites.

Pig tail...they were most excited about me trying this.

Left, this is only part of our feast (pig ears, spicy vegetable starch noodles, tiny whole shrimp, chrysanthemum greens, pig tail, duck tongue, spicy cauliflower and marinated bamboo shoots.

The pic on the right is the sweet potato "juice" that we drank with our meal, it was really good but

not very refreshing.

Duck tongue. That's all I have to say about it.

Donkey meat.

Our feast just keeps growing in size. Too much food. Additions, giant mushrooms
served like scallops, spicy beef, steamed broccoli stems and really tummy braised chicken.

The men on the team enjoying all the food.

My favorite dish. Spicy whole braised fish. Turns out if was almost
everyone's favorite dish.

   At the end of the meal we had 2 bread-type products show up. One was sweet and starchy (what you can see in Ewgenia's chop sticks, which I just pissed capturing her feeding Iris...they are 2 peas in a pod now that Iris is back. It was like watching big sister and little sister together). The second treat was the "pancakes" that are shown on the right. Iris told me that these bring back memories of grade school b/c she used to eat them a lot back then. These pancakes are a Shanghai specialty made with sake and you could really taste the sake, they were so good.

   Now it's my last evening in Shanghai, I have finished packing and am now looking forward to starting my journey home. I have a small 3 day pit stop in Vietnam for work but will land in PDX Sunday morning. I am lucky to have Donald, Matt and Lily picking me up at the airport.

I can't wait to see my PDX friends and family soon.