phew.

phew so much to tell i dont know where to begin. okay the above image is the community where i live. It is mostly expats of the british and french persuasion in spanish style living. It is actually uncommon to live in places like this in shanghai, but i like it just the same. Great people, friendly gaurds, alot of dogs, and also you feel like youre in spain minus the whole censcorship thing :) its good for running, today was a hot day, i should have run but instead took a walk down to starbucks and my new favorite place to eat luch, zentral, which is a combo of eggs salads and such, plus they have cappuccinos so im in heaven.

These are some decorations made my the kids at natlies school, i think they are for chinese new year, theyre a lot of fun. The school that she goes to is british, its actually an amazing school, i was looking her curriculum..numerology, cooking class, african art...geez i definatley didnt do things like this in grade school, not mention most of these kinds are bi or multilingual. yeesh. a entire institue full of young genius minds. oh yeah and they all take mandarin.

so really havent lived until youve been to the chinese circus, it is just about everything you would imagine in to be. this is a bear blancing on a board over a pipe..catching hoops. gah, the thing is, circus in the us is not like this anymore because of animal protection laws, so this was really amazing. hopefully the poor animals are okay :) They seem to be happy anyway.

this is natlie and jane in century park. We spent sunday there running around and playing more tag than one should be alotted. everyone woke up sore. it was a lot of fun...i ran off my hangover after a little too much fun the night before. all i can say is thank god we ate japanese that morning and thank god for ginger with sushi...if it werent for that ginger...i dont think i would have made it through this day without getting sick. ick. note to self...limit your drinks more firmly in the future.

The problem is that i went out alone hoping to find the person i was meeting, when i couldnt find him i just made freinds with everyone else at the bar that i was at. namely two chinese girls named jessica and stella who bought a bottle of wine to be nice that they kept shoving at me. normally i would jump at this offer, but given that i had already had two g & t's just before, i very reluctatnly drank two more glasses of wine not wanting to be rude. Basically this night was just a blur...and i the future...i will alot for people to buy me drinks lol.

anways i did end up meeting some really cool people there..one guy in the band named etienne (gah my favorite name ever) who i coerced into practicing french with me, and other french gentlemen named raphaelle...with whom i will also practice at some point. Basically everyone at this bar was just awesome, and i hope i can muster up the strenght to go back there seeing as im pretty sure i acted like a complete idiot after that bottle of wine. stupid manners.

love you all.

j