and the week ends..

i had sorta a bum weekend.

1. M. butterfly was shut down by the police for some unknown reason. darn, and i really wanted to be "cultured" in china.
2. we have been having bad luck with food. first, thanksgiving dinner was overpriced and under-good. i was craving prime rib so we went to Lawry's but it was costly and was average at best. we later learned that we could have bought an entire turkey with trimmings for a third of that price. then yesterday, after eating noodles that nearly made me barf, we walked down the street and saw a dead rat right outside the row of restaurants by the gutter. ew. then we waited an hour at china mobile and then got the most rude, impatient, racist teller who i viscerally reacted to. let's just say if we were living back in the three kingdoms, this guy would be my mortal enemy in the battlefield. then we went to a taiwanese restaurant and ordered what i thought was japanese dessert toast. it ended up being the most disgusting shell of mayonnaise mixed with icy ham, peas and carrots. what the hell. but the night got better. we tried a new thai restaurant with some friends and hung out at Cotton's, a nice bar that would have been better without the extremely loud locals, screaming at the top of their lungs. i bought a nice warm hat that accentuates the chilly weather from a vendor for less than half the price of how much it was being sold in a store up the street.
3. on the bright side, i always enjoy meeting new people from around the world and this weekend we met a lebanese man who is from australia and living in japan and teaching business in hangzhou. we also met a lady from NY who is in the marketing industry and a lady who works in a business related field living in SH. both could relate to the pains of being an ABC in china, which was super cool. all friends of friends. in SH, there is never a shortage of the different people you might come across that you never would otherwise. that is one of my favorite parts about being here.

here's to a good week.