Our (could be) home by the river

Trip Start Jun 13, 2008

Trip End Sep 30, 2008

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Flag of China Shanghai, China
Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Hello form "can it get much hotter" Shanghai. Well actually I should embrace the moment cause yesterday it was cloudy and it gave us hope for arrival of some chilly weekends ahead. But today it sunny again, didn't get out yet, but I think the heat rules.
Last week we went to 50 Moganshan Rd, where they have many art galleries. Can't say I was overwhelmed by what we saw there, but it was nice wandering around from one gallery to the other. Nadavi gave us a two hour relief when he fell asleep exactly when we entered one of the coffee shops there.
After that we went to a small playground in the middle of a residence complex. We showed Nadavi our gratitude for his thoughtfulness:

Playground

Playground1

Playground5

Why do thye cry all the time?

From there we continued walking and came upon another complex, much bigger one, on the bank of one of the streams which cross Shanghai. As you can see from the pics, its all green around , and the open space between the buildings allows the recycling of the air. Both of these basic feature for residence don't exist in our neighborhood, so we felt sorry for not taking the time to search for a place like this when we arrived. Maybe next time...

While walking there we heard a strong explosion sounds reaping one another. Looking around, I saw the source. It seems that from some reason, instead of drilling in the ground for laying foundations, they insert them to the ground with an giant detonation based hammer.When the big weight in the picture hit the concrete an explosion lift it back up again. (Did somebody ask the neighbors if they mind hearing these explosions on Sunday?)

Chinese Drilling1

Chinese Drilling2

Since then another week passed. Efi has been checking another hospital , where she might specialize in few field which are not available for her in YueYang hospital , like Gynecology and Cardiology. I bought my first folding bicycle, which I want to take back to Israel and use them to go and return from the train station. Actually, I already enjoy them here. On Friday I did a small trip in our quarter. I had to learn the traffic rules while riding, and I can say it was somewhat scary. Bicycles do have there lanes, but on junctions the lanes unite , and when the road continues afterwords, it's not so easy to find the bicycle lane again. Once or twice I found myself riding on the opposite direction, on my way to one of the highways.
On this trip I found a local climbing gym, and an almost forgotten passion for this sport has arisen. I think I will do it more often.(Had some plans on taking some kongfu lessons, but I think it's much more fun being a spider-man again).
Riding on these lanes together with many other chinese riders, I felt as local as I ever did since we came here. The feeling grew stronger, when a Chinese guy undersoot what I said when I asked him the way to our street on my way back.
And last, if the pics above weren't enough, here are some more of Nadavi's (and ours) fun moments: