Different kind of Christmas

The holidays will be different this year. There's just no getting around it. Forgetting for a moment the fact that we're living in a culture that doesn't observe Christmas, it's also a first for celebrating away from our families.  So, feeling a little down, I set out in search of a flower market that I had heard would be selling Christmas decorations. I wasn't expecting much, maybe a tiny snowman or a box of candy canes, anything to make the apartment feel more like home at Christmas.

We didn't know exactly where we were going.  Since it was more than an hour's trip away from the apartment I had dragged Joel out with me for the expedition. I had a general idea of which metro stop to take and from there I was relying on a rough translation of the words "flower" and "market" to get us there in a taxi.

We hail the first cab we see upon exiting the subway. We recite the prepared words we've studied that we think mean "flower market" and after a few minutes of confused arguing we get back out of the cab. Seeing that plan A didn't work (and we can't say we were surprised, really) we decide to phone a friend. We hail a second cab, more confident this time because we have a native Shanghai-er on the phone to translate for us. With a few rough grunts that indicate he has at least understood what we want we're off. Our friend told us to expect a 20 minute taxi ride, so when we get dropped off in the middle of the road not 5 minutes later we're a little wary. At any rate, with no other options to speak of we enter under the arch the driver is pointing to and find this:

The market

The arch. Not very promising is it?

Really loud birds.

The clump of white in the blue cage is a bunch of rabbits.

It's an animal market. Full of birds and dogs and rabbits huddled together for warmth. We search high and low looking for a secret entrance to the flower market that I know must exist, but to no avail.

We exited the market and walk around for another half an hour looking for any sign of it.  I'll admit that at this point I was a bit...distressed. It was one of those days when disappointment over something small instantaneously floods into something bigger, missing home, missing friends, feeling like you're completely lost in the middle of a huge city with no way to communicate with anyone. And just like that, I was crying in the middle of the sidewalk surrounded by Chinese people.

Honestly, it wasn't so much a woe-is-me cry as an I'm-furious-and-there's-nothing-else-I-can-do-about-it-right-now cry. Nevertheless, I took a few moments to get it out of my system, and set back towards the metro to go home. We must have asked a dozen people where to find the market and no one knew what we were talking about. Finally I happened on a tiny boutique store that had some interesting looking things in the window, so I slipped inside hoping to find something to make my journey worthwhile.

The shop owner was friendly, and I bought items that fit the bill. As we were leaving I decided to try one last time for the flower market. Low and behold- he knew! He said we were just five minutes away. [I had him write down the address in Chinese to be safe].

And we found this...

A winter wonderland of Christmas! They had giant trees and tinsel and snowflakes. I was in heaven! It was all completely ridiculous, of course, none of it quite made sense. Like, the angels would have bows and arrows or the snowmen salt and pepper shakers would all be for Pepper, no salt, but it was so much fun to explore. I got some ribbon and a couple of strings of lights to put on our little tree that mom brought over. And then there were the flowers...

Stalls and stalls full of fresh cut flowers waiting to be arranged! Entire shops full of orchids or other exotic plants. It was delightful. On the way out a grabbed some white ranunculous, a purple cabbage flower, a few stems of eucalyptus and some lavender wax flower to make a nice wintery arrangement. So here's the end result. Our "Christmas apartment."

Our tiny Christmas tree

Our hand painted Shanghai ornament, snowman, and assortment of hot cocoa from mom :)

New wintery votives and on the table behind you can see a glimpse of the flowers.

China or no China, Merry Christmas from the Coxes!

The Twelve Hour Tour

Earlier this week we had the delightful surprise of a visit from Cliff. It's very difficult to surprise someone with an international visit, so I have to hand it to him on that. 

Originally he wasn't going to tell us that he was flying through Shanghai, because it was too sad for him to be so close and not be able to leave the airport (since he doesn't have a visa). Come to find out customs doesn't care about the visa if you're on a layover, even if it's overnight. They let you right on through! So it was our pleasure to host Cliff here for the twelve hours he was in Shanghai. Here are a few pictures from our twelve hour tour. 

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There were blue lights everywhere downtown. Christmas? Perhaps.

In front of the Pearl Tower.

We ate at one of our favorite places. You can't tell it from our faces but we had a lovely time.

That's Cliff with part of our skyline.

What do you mean Pluto's not a planet?

A few days back I found myself in a classroom with the task of introducing the letter U to my kindergarten group. The job consisted of me reading the "U" book that had a boy in his underwear (get it "u" for underwear) as the star which caused the kids to seize with fits of giggles. After the book they called out words that they thought started with "U", and it was my job to write them on the poster board and draw a picture so that they would know what the word actually said.

Now, obviously, I'm not an artist. My drawing skills are mediocre at best, but to elementary aged kids I might as well be Da Vinci himself. They go nuts whenever I draw things on the board. Just this Thursday I was in a third grade class and had to draw a scene that to an adult eye would have looked like a really pitiful attempt at a landscape, but it was all I could do to calm the group from all their shouting, "PLEASE Mrs. Cox, PLEASE autograph this, I want to take it home!!!!" "OH MY GOSH this is the best drawing I have ever seen in my ENTIRE LIFE!" Not being very familiar with eight year olds, I assumed, as anyone would, that they were mocking me until I saw that a couple of them were actually tearing up with excitement and no one was laughing. I swallowed my own laughter at their enthusiasm and brought the class back to order stopping briefly to treasure the moment of artistic praise that I know would never come again by anyone over the age of 9.  So after all the accolades, I was pretty proud of my pint sized illustration of the letter U, and so I took a picture to show Joel my masterpiece.  When he got home I had him look it over, expecting some snide remark about this being my days work versus his day of grading essays, but no such remark came.

Instead, after a few moments of quiet he finally said, "This is great, but if this is our universe, where is the other planet?"

Fully prepared for this I said, "Oh, they're all there. Don't you remember?  Pluto's not a planet anymore."

To which he patiently replied. "Yes, but you only have seven and there should still be eight."

Which lead me directly to sing my trusty planets song (ala 2nd grade, Mrs. Crawford's class. Catherine can back me up on this. She watched the sing-a-long science videos too) aloud to check: "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Pancakes!...See they're all there minus the pancakes."

"Nope. Where's Neptune?"

Neptune? Neptune! What in the heck is the point of a song to memorize the planets if you're going to leave one out. Thanks a lot Mrs. Crawford. Ok, I can't even joke about that. Mrs. Crawford was amazing; but seriously, consider revising the planet song.

More likely explanation: Mrs. Crawford taught the song with Neptune in it and this is the first sign that I am, in fact, loosing my marbles.  The shining light is that now an entire class of kindergartners sings the song the wrong way just like I do. Better luck next time, Neptune.