I feel official "settled" now.

I'm going to bore you a bit and talk to future me about our new life in Shanghai (with photos!). To sum it up, living next to "things" is a game changer. I think one of the things I didn't like as much in Guangzhou is that the only place in walking distance was a supermarket and a few local restaurants - and even that was about 15 minutes. What a change to here, with so much being a few minutes walk. Farmers markets, western and local restaurants, banks, Carrefour (like Walmart), movie theater, malls (they just opened another yesterday, so now there are four right next to each other), and two metro stations. One of the lines has a lot of the popular sights and nightlife of the city, and the "fun stuff" starts just 3 stops up. So this is definitely the closest I've lived to the heart of a large city, and the closest I've lived to a metro station. I think it's not a secret how much I like metros, so the only way things could be improved is if I could move my work and home on top of one. (or in one?) But for now, I thought I'd give you a tour of our neighborhood. There's so much around that I feel we still have a lot to discover, but at least you'll get an idea of what "regular life" in Shanghai looks like.

Outside our door

Our street

One of the malls

Footbridge from the mall to metro

Not on the commute, to Ella's disappointment.

Speaking of work, I have my commute worked out. I've walked once or twice, but it's about 25 minutes. Then I took the bus, which took about 15. I found out it's much faster to take a bike. China is pretty big on these dockless bikes, where you scan a QR code on the back and it unlocks. They cost 1.5 yuan per rental (20 cents or so?), though you can buy packages to lower the cost. At first I was a bit nervous about riding a bike, as I hadn't done it consistently since Hangzhou. But in Shanghai it feels a lot safer. They have dedicated bike lines, and I'm by no means the only one using them. I'm starting to recognize people who leave around the same time as me, so I like to think we're the most uncool bike gang in the world. I never thought I'd be one of "those" people who bike to work, but here I am.

Speaking of work, work is... not what I expected. I thought working at an IB school, everything would be run professionally, I'd be the newbie teacher, and at the start I'd work my butt off to catch up to everyone else. Nothing could be further from the truth. Essentially, it's not that much different from any other school I've worked at, minus a bit more collaboration between the foreign and local staff. While I'm not the only new IB teacher, during an icebreaking game I was surprised to find I'm the 2nd most experienced in our department. But it's good in a way, not unlike my situation in Thailand - people just sort of assume you're doing the work and leave you alone. I like it, but I can understand how some (such as Ella, for example), would find the lack of instruction (and confusion on where to get things) unnerving. One nice thing is that I only have two classes, whom I each see 6 times a week. This is the first time I've gotten a chance to really know my students well, and although there's more lesson plans to juggle, it's overall less and more satisfying work. I can't say I'll be there for 10 years, but right now I like it. Let's see how that changes over the next few months.

This is the part where I talk about all the amazing sights we've seen in Shanghai. I'm sorry to say there's not much to talk about. In truth, we've been super busy socially. We've been hanging out with two couples a lot, who are all just stand up folks. The six of us are new to Shanghai as well, so we're all trying to figure out where the cool stuff is. For example, we recently went to a stand-up comedy event, which surprised me at how funny it was. We did that once before in Bangkok, but I felt this time was even better. Other than that... lot of malls, eating, and drinking. We even had a pal from Guangzhou stop by, which was a very welcome surprise. However, I do want to mention something. I noticed one of our new couple friends, who-shall-remain-nameless-to-potentially-avoid-embarassment, takes photos of their food. Now, I admit I'm not on the Instagrams. I don't know if that's the culture there. But should I be taking photos of my food? I suppose it is different than what you get in the US. I just can't think that anyone would care. If you would care, give me a shout, I'd be happy to oblige.

We did explore a little bit though. One stop was Longhua Temple, which I just thought we'd see because it was a metro station wee passed. It's a nice stop if you're in the area, not worth a trip. It does have a lot of stray cats though, so it was a big hit for Ella. The more interesting temple option is the Jade Temple. While I didn't really see any jade, it is a remarkably well preserved (or more accurately, renovated) temple that wouldn't be out of place in a kung fu movie. I feel this is worth a trip if you're a visitor to Shanghai, and maybe if you're a local. Although as I've said many times before, "If you've seen one temple, you've seen 99% of them." Still, it's been a while, so it was a nice distraction. Next to the temple was a weird sort of arts district, which had an exhibit on technology. I don't really know what a live display of German flight logs has to say about art, but... well, it's there I guess? They did have these cool AR displays though, so that's more my speed.

Another place we went to was the Shanghai Movie Museum, which is pretty cool despite me not knowing any of the movies or actors. Normally it's 60 yuan ($9), which is probably not worth it. But they had a discount week of 30 yuan ($4), which is worth it. It's not exactly huge - you can blow through it in about 45 minutes. But they did have some interesting stuff. For starters, when you walk in there's a light up red carpet complete with the sounds of an adoring crowd, which basically made the whole thing worth it. But in addition to that, there was a lot of stuff that you can appreciate even if you don't know Chinese cinema. Things like video cameras from the early days of movies, props, projectors, and film development. They also had some interactive stuff for the kids (and me), demonstrating stop motion and other physical animation stuff. Worth it if you're strapped for stuff to do, probably not if you're just here briefly. But because I live to embarrass Ella, I took a video of her there which I am quite proud of.

Anyway, next week is National Holiday, which means a week off of work. Ella and I have tickets to a place neither of us have been before, so you'll have to wait for the next update to see where that is.