Back for year two

We're back to Shanghai after a whirlwind of a summer.  We landed here Tuesday night and both kept repeating how different it is to arrive a year later.  From getting a cab at the airport, to walking into "our" apartment and sleeping in "our" bed instead of some sheets on a board like last year.  It was fun to see and feel the different feelings.

Before we went to bed Bri did some scheduling with her masseuse so we both got a much needed massage Wednesday morning.  I made it to the wet market for dumplings and a breakfast burrito before it was my turn to get a massage.  All of my acquaintances were still there and seemed happy to see me.  The dumpling guy seemed to forget that I had a very limited mandarin vocabulary.   He was talking to me in a stream of incomprehensible sentences and laughing when I said I didn't know what he was saying.

With the morning mostly consumed by the massages we'd saved the afternoon to run some errands aimed at replenishing our kitchen cupboards.  That was interrupted by typhoon Haikui (Click here for article on Typhoon Haikui)  that came ashore south of Shanghai yesterday morning.  It was our first typhoon experience after a typhoon last August missed coming onto shore entirely.  Most of the morning there had just been brief showers and gusts of wind, but as the day went on the showers became harder and the wind more consistently volatile.  We decided to forget the grocery store run and just let the storm blow by. 

So what do you do on windy rainy days?  You read books, watch a movie, take a nap.  That's exactly what we did during our first afternoon back.  The only problem was our one hour nap turned into a five hour nap and that's not very helpful when you are trying to flip your biological clock.  Oh well, it sure is a good way to pass a rainy afternoon.

Matt