Getting Settled

We have been in China a week now and I figured it would be a good time to post an update on how life has been so far.  Sorry for the lack of photos on this post – the Internet is slow and I'm inpatient.  I've uploaded a few at the bottom of this post and will try for more soon.  Also, I will apologize for any formatting issues in this post.  The Internet crashed a few times while drafting this and I kept losing my drafts.  I ended up copying and pasting from Word and it made my formatting all funky.  Sorry!  I tried fixing it, but its Saturday night, Ang is asleep and Rich and I are enjoying a movie and a glass of wine.  So I'm giving up on the formatting and posting as is!

Our new neighborhood is great.  Within 5 to 10 minutes walking there is a giant shopping mall, a nice park along the river (actually 2 parks, we just visited another one Friday night), a city foods grocery store (with all imported brands) and plenty of coffee shops.  Rich's office is very close by as well.  This works out great because he is able to spend quite a bit of time with us in the morning before heading off to work for the day.  The shopping mall nearby really is huge and has almost everything you could need (Best Buy, Toys r Us, grocery store, etc).  It is probably dangerously close - especially considering everybody here delivers for a very small fee.  Unfortunately all of the entrances have stairways so it is not very stroller friendly.  Luckily Ang has taken well to the Baby Bjorn!!

Wednesday morning we witnessed a pretty cool event - there was a total solar eclipse that left Shanghai completely dark for about 5 minutes.  Unfortunately the sky was very cloudy that morning so you couldn't actually see the eclipse (and I didn't have a pair of special glasses to view it with anyways).  However, around 9:15am the sky started turning very gray.  By 9:30 it was completely dark out, it looked like it was the middle of the night.  Within ten minutes it was light out again.  They say that this was the longest solar eclipse of our lifetime!

I am really enjoying our new home.  It is so big!!  It has been over two months since they packed up our apartment in New York and I'm having fun sorting through the boxes finding things that I had forgotten about.  It is great that we have so much space for everything (I was feeling a bit claustrophobic in our New Rochelle apartment).  A few fun facts about our home: 

·         No keys required!  The entrance is password/handprint driven.  There is a special code for the elevator that will get you to our floor and the elevator opens directly to our entryway.  There is then another code/handprint for the door. 

·         Our washer and drier have Chinese on the dials.  I had to pull out the guide book for the English translations.  I still have no idea if I'm using them right.  So far I haven't ruined any of our laundry. 

·         We have an awesome spa tub in our bathroom.  I haven't tried it out yet because I haven't found the time to read the 360 page manual that describes how to use it.  Yes, 360 pages of instruction on how to use a bathtub. 

Angela is still working on adjusting to the new time zone and new bed.  We have had a few rough nights with her but it hasn't been nearly as rough as I expected.  Last night and tonight were significantly better so I'm pretty optimistic that we will have her back on schedule by the time this weekend is over.  We did reach a new milestone this week - she rolled!!  She went from her back to her front and seemed very surprised once she got there.  Of course, she is not the biggest fan of tummy time so after resting for a few minutes she started getting pretty upset about being stuck there.  Now we will just have to work on getting her to go front to back!

So far things are going great in Shanghai.  Rich and I are so happy to be back living under the same roof and we are very optimistic that our time in China will be wonderful.  I've managed to get a few pictures uploaded and will hopefully get more up here soon! 

Miss you all!

Getting Settled pics

Rich works in this tower - on the 9th floor

Random street cleaning - there is no shortage of manual labor here

The washer - makes doing laundry quite the experiment.

The view from our bedroom balcony - it was rainy out the day I took this hence the foggy look

Ang - shortly after she rolled for the first time

We have arrived...

It took me a little while but I finally managed to connect to blogger so that I can post an update about our trip. Apparently this is one of the sites that is still censored in China. It seems that Facebook is currently blocked too. Thanks to Google and some articles written be other ex-pats I'm now back up and running in the social networking world!

Angela was a great little travel buddy and the trip here was so much easier than I anticipated. Security in Raleigh was a breeze, they have a special family lane and offered assistance with getting the stroller and car seat through the x-ray machine. We were able to board our first flight early and the flight attendant was incredibly helpful with getting the car seat and all of our belongings situated. I nursed Angela during take off and landing and the flight didn't seem to bother her one bit. We had a few hours to kill in Chicago so we found a nice quiet spot, set up a blanket on the floor, and played for a bit. It was an easy boarding process in Chicago and once again the flight attendants offered a lot of help with the baby. The flight from Chicago to Shanghai is a little over 14 hours. Angela was awake for about the first 8 hours (napped off and on for a little bit) and then slept pretty well for the end of the flight. There were not many passengers on the plane which made it easy to walk up and down the aisles to keep Ang from fussing too much. The flight attendants were more than happy to hold her anytime I had to use the restroom.

Ang was sound asleep when we landed in Shanghai and didn't wake up for the health check, immigration, baggage claim or customs. Two things impressed me when we arrived in Shanghai:
1. Express Lane! One of the immigration workers saw me with the stroller and motioned for me to follow her. Rather than wait in the long line that was forming, she opened a special gate that sent me directly to the next open agent. Normally I don't like to take advantage of special services like this just because I have a baby, but I was pretty happy that I could expedite getting through immigration (because I knew once Ang woke up she was not going to be happy sitting in the car seat any longer).
2. After loading up a cart with our four checked bags (we don't pack lightly) I had to push the cart and stroller through customs and out to the greeting hall. One of the customs agents saw me and pushed the stroller for me!! I didn't expect this offer of help and was very surprised to see it.

Rich was waiting for us when we exited customs (luckily he made it in time, our flight was almost an hour early and we were pretty quick getting through the airport). The trip from the airport to our apartment was interesting. Car seats are not required in China and many of the traditional taxis don't even have seat belts. The driver that picked us up at the airport had seat belts so Ang was strapped in. From what I have read, its only the taxi cabs that do not have seat belts so we will just have to steer clear of those! There is construction on the roads everywhere and the drivers are crazy! It took about 30 minutes to get to our apartment and when we arrived we were greeted very kindly by the building manager and concierge.

It was such a great feeling to finally arrive here in Shanghai and be "home" with Rich. The trip really was much easier than I anticipated although I'm not sure I would want to do that flight too often (and give Rich lots of credit for already having done it so many times this year). Ang and I are struggling a little bit with jet lag but had a pretty good first night last night (she slept off and on all night) and Rich is struggling with 'baby schedule' (she was wide awake and ready to play at 5:30 thsi morning). We made it out to the grocery store and the mall today - both within 5 minutes walking of the apartment. Its nice to know I can head over to the mall easily and get home very quickly if Ang gets fussy.

First impressions, our apartment is wonderful. It's huge and has many great amenities. The view is awesome and I think the location will suit us well. I will start taking some pictures and will post an update about the apartment later. For now, I'm going to log off and try to unpack a bit!

Four months!

Angela will be four months on Thursday and we went for her well being visit with the pediatrician this morning. Her stats:

Weight - 10lb 5oz (3rd percentile)
Length - 24 inches (45th percentile)
Head - 16.5 (80th percentile)...a true Bozzuto!!

She is a skinny little thing but the pediatrician is not concerned with her weight. She has continued to grow and that is the important part. She is meeting all of the important milestones and it has been so much fun watching her as she starts to explore new things. She is so close to rolling over on her own!!

Only a few more days in North Carolina - we leave for Shanghai first thing Friday morning!! I am a little anxious about the flight, but feel pretty confident that Ang will be easy to travel with. We are really looking forward to seeing Rich and can't wait to settle into our new home.

Some recent pictures