A quiet day in Shanghai

This morning I spent organizing and uploading photos, checking email and Facebook before I finally got organized to do something just before midday.

I walked to Carrefour and picked up some supplies to cook Green Chicken Curry and also a local SIM card. I stupidly wore my new shoes which ripped the skin off my heels so I pretty much hobbled home!

After cooking the curry and changing my shoes, I headed down to the service center to get a taxi out to the Shanghai American School (SAS) where Glynis and Kevin teach. One of the staff from the service center checked with the female taxi driver to make sure she knew where she was going. So we headed off...

All was going well for about 35 minutes. Then I spied a look of doubt in the driver's eyes. We pull over to the side of the road, check the GPS again (yes, she had a GPS!), make about 3 phone calls and still she is not looking confident.

Another U-turn and she pulls the taxi up next to a truck with the windsheild blown out and asked a couple truck drivers if they know the way - no luck. So as a final resort, she gets out, flags down a car on the highway and asks him for directions. Luckily for the taxi driver, this bloke knew where we were going. He even let the taxi follow him all the way to the front gates of the Golf Course (yes, the school is in the middle of a golf course!).

Ironically, as we were following this guy, 15 school buses turned into the road and surprise, surprise, guess where they were going! We could have just followed them.

Anyway... I finally get to the school just in time to meet Glynis before she has to head to the auditorium to listen to some guy talk about "Best Friend - Worst Enemy". So we sat there listening to him for an hour which was actually OK because it was funny to hear the middle-schooler's comments.

After the talk, Glynis took me on a quick tour around the school - amazing facilities! We grabbed our stuff from her room, said a quick hi to Janna whom I worked with in kuwait (although she didn't remember me) and then headed to the bus for the trip home.

We dropped our stuff off and headed to Starbucks for a coffee before heading home. The evening was spent on the couch watching American Idol. I also managed to give my high school best friend Sally a call who works at the other campus of SAS as a middle school music teacher. I hadn't spoken to her for 11 years and it was great to speak with her again. Unfortunately she's heading off to the US tomorrow so we won't get to catch up this time. She's moving to Hanoi so who knows, we may get to catch up.

I also spent some time trying to figure out how to ask for a taxi to the Maglev train station so I can get there to pick up Ross tomorrow. Not as easy as it sounds!