Still in Shanghai and still no baby!

Ok the BIG question:  Did you have the baby yet???  Nope...she is still snuggled up in my belly and doing just fine after our 39 week check up!  Don't worry there will be photos and such once she is in our arms, Brian and I can't wait...Blake has no idea what's coming :)  Lucky for me little girl is looking smaller and lower than Blake was!  It's November time for another BIRTH day!

So what have we been up to in Shanghai....still taking it easy mostly, haven't been site seeing or anything this week but I can tell you my top 3 things I can't stand about China....

1.  People walking around chewing loudly with their mouth open, its a cultural norm here.

2.  Cab drivers that don't want to stop for a pregnant lady with a toddler and stroller, they wave a "no thank you" hand and drive by with their green light on.

3.  Crazy taxi drivers- you get thrown around the cab in hopes they are staying in one lane and know where they are taking you!

Our Halloween in China, in Shanghai there is more of an expatriate population than in Changzhou so there is usually more events centered around expat lifestyles and holidays here.  There were many haunted events and Halloween parties in town but not many for the kiddos!  I have been asked where they can go Trick or Treating, I am not sure if any expat communities or neighborhoods hosted such an event I wasn't able to find information out on this for us, but there were some areas allowing the kids to come around in costumes.  There is an area called Laowai Jai which is the foreigners street, there are many restaurants with western foods and different ethnic food other than Chinese, its a nice place where you can sit inside or outside to enjoy some yummy food!  The restaurants here, including two of Brian's favorites in Shanghai, Fat Cow (burgers and fries) and Shanghai Brewery (beer of course) were handing out candy and letting kids walk through the restaurants trick or treating.  Blake was able to tell our waitress "Roar" for some candy since he was a little dinosaur.  He warmed up to his costume about 20 minutes after having it on, but then it was raining a ton and we didn't really get good/happy photos of him in it.  The drive there was interesting as well, Brian said he wished he had counted the number of left and right turns the cab driver took to get there.  I think after 40 minutes we arrived, given there was a lot of traffic and rain it was a ridiculous route to get there and he was trying to use his GPS.....ugh.  All in all we got Blake dressed up and spent some time as a family, we were pretty happy!  It was also my dad's birthday so we skipped another double day for the baby's birthday.....next year is his 60th birthday and we will all be celebrating in Hawaii!!!

LaiWaiJai Street

One mad dinosaur!

Missing his head!

While in Shanghai we have an Ayi that is wonderful, helping me with Blake part time during the days.  She mostly helps take him outside to play and keep him active and around some kiddos while he is away from school and his friends in Changzhou.  She works for us on Saturdays too so we were able to sneak away for lunch on Saturday just Brian and I which we know is not something we get a lot of time to do, and certainly won't in the near future with a new little one.  We walked to a nearby mall since the weather was a bit crisp but a nice fall day, inside we walked around a bit and bought a few things for the little one, then happend to walk past a "baby spa".  You can see from the photos below it is sort of an indoor pool for babies.  As you walk by there was a naked baby in a private pool cube type thing floating around, then there was the larger pool which you could put your child in a tube to float around.....quite an interesting site to have on display in the middle of the mall, made me chuckle.

After walking around the mall we went to lunch....at Outback steakhouse!  Yes they are actually here in Shanghai, they have 3 locations and we are staying close to one.  It was nice to have a steak for lunch, the beef here isn't quite like at home so this had a taste of home for us.  Of course we got the bloomin onion, i had three Shirley Temples which cost half of what my meal did and we both enjoyed some fillets for lunch!  It was very similar to home, the bread was not the molasses bread i have enjoyed before and it was a very sweet honey butter served with the bread they offered, most Chinese people as I looked around the restaurant were eating their bread off a fork, not cutting it up just a chuck of break on a fork, strange.  The sauteed mushrooms Brian usually orders were not on the menu, the manager later told us they weren't so popular so they removed them from the menu in China.  Otherwise the restaurant was pretty full for 11:30am on a Saturday for lunch, we were the only foreigners so local people must enjoy the place and the food.

Later that day we had planned to go to the Shanghai International Beer Festival but by the time we made it downtown the line was like Tempe on New Years Eve for the block party, it was raining and the pregnant lady and toddler were not going to be indulging in any beer.  So we decided to leave and eat at our new favorite deli down near The Bund area.  Here are our smoked meat sandwiches, I had more of a corned beef on rye and Brian got the Ruben with the smoked meat, pretty great for China!

Just a random picture I took from a cab, not sure what a stomachological disease center is, there has to be a more scientific name for this, whatever they study!

Today I am going to check out a place called The Pantry in the Former French Concession district for lunch, it appears its 4 businesses combined that has a shop/restaurant catering to foreigners with cookies, ice cream, cupcakes, sandwiches, homemade jams and butters.  I'll let you know how that is next time :)  That's about all for my update for now.