April Fool's Day!

Hi Folks,
Well April Fools day here in Shanghai has turned into another spectacular day weatherwise! Despite what CNN weather is forecasting, it was a warm and sunny day today -- actually broke out my capris pants and Joel wore shorts. Honestly, the weather has been wonderful and the city is beautiful with trees in bloom and spring arriving. Magnolias are blossoming everywhere, although it's hard to smell them for all the pollution!

Naomi continues to be a great sport and has impressed me with her ability to adapt. She napped for 90 minutes this morning after breakfast and awoke without too much fanfare despite the fact that really she just wanted to sleep for about 8 more hours. It takes even more than a normal amount of time for my "not a morning" girl to wake up here, so we usually just fire her in the hip hammock (a life/back saver), throw some M&M's in her hand and warn our travelmates not to talk to her till she's had her time. She met two of our travelmates who arrived last night (Mike and Cheryl) and has taken a real liking to Mike in particular. She also has been shying up to our guide Lily more today, as Lily discovered two of her weaknesses (being the center of attention and being spun around wildly). At times she prefered Mike or Lily over one of us, which we welcome as a sign that she's starting to get back on track after our trek halfway around the world.

We headed out this morning with Lily leading the way to the Pearl TV Tower, the Jin Mao tower, the Bund and Nancheng Road. Naomi loves tall towers, so she was delighted. We first went to the bottom of the Pearl TV tower and took some pictures (below). The Pearl TV tower is the third tallest freestanding building in the world, next to our CN tower and a tower in Russia. The observation deck is 340 meters up, but our guide told us that the Jin Mao tower was 341 meters up and offered a better view so we headed there next. Our trip up took all of 45 seconds in a very fast elevator and we arrived at the observation deck in awe of how big Shanghai really is. The view was spectacular. The Jin Mao tower houses the Grand Hyatt from floors 56 to 87 and when you look down the center of the building from the observation deck on the 88th floor you see the lobby of the hotel below. Quite cool as seen in the photo below.

We had lunch in the Jin Mao tower (which actually is mostly an office building), then headed to the other side of the Huangpu river and the Bund. Once there, purchasing knock-off Rolex watches became a sport with the illegal street vendors. Joel settled for two "Rolex" watches for 100 Yuan (15 bucks Canadian), but my dad ended up a real winner getting four for the same price. I didn't think Joel would ever live down his buying the horrible Budda set, dragons and Lions in Forbidden City last time, but this one now takes the cake when it comes to deals. I'm sure that the competition will get more fierce as the week goes on! Funniest thing about it is that Joel doesn't ever wear a watch.

The Bund is 1km long and runs parrallel to the Huangpu river, which is a major carrier of ships. Naomi was delighted and gave us several rounds of "row, row, row your boat". Tomorrow evening, we're taking a tour boat in the evening to catch the real essence of night lights in Shanghai.

Around 2pm, we decided to bring Naomi back to the hotel for a nap while the rest of our group headed to the pedestrian mall on Nancheng Road. Sounds like they had fun with the vendors again. Back at our room, Naomi decided though that sleep wasn't fun and didn't nap. Needless to say she's exhausted and we decided to order room service for her and I tonight instead of heading out for dinner with the rest of our group. The remainder of our group actually arrived this evening, so Joel and Papa are having dinner with them. When our food arrived, Naomi actually ended up being too exhausted to eat. She fell asleep before she even realized that we had ordered some of her favorite foods (peas & corn; rice and shrimp; watermelon, grapes and cantelope). The food was amazing and only about $20 CAD for room service and enough food for about three meals. What is brutal is that our whole meal for 8 of us last night was the same and included three large bottles of beer! I am loving the food here, there is nothing like it! Naomi on the other hand is not so fond of the unfamiliar flavours and is still going light on the eating part. Every night though she wakes up and asks for "some Cheerios and milk please", and then usually downs some yogurt or fruit as well. Hopefully she'll get more adventuresome as she becomes more rested. Hopefully that is within the next two days, before we throw a baby sister in the mix! All in all though, things are going great.

The DVD player is turning out to be a godsend, especially in the middle of the night. I'm also so glad that we've come early enough to get over the jetlag before we head to Changsha, and also because Shanghai is a very interesting city and so worthy of a longer visit.

Tomorrow we visit a Jade Budda Temple and take a cruise down the Huangpu River. I'm sure that there will be more opportunities to do more bargaining as well - although we need to wait until we get to Changsha and get rid of 1/2 the stuff in our luggage before we have much room to buy stuff.

I still can't believe sometimes that we are actually here. To top it all off, it's so surreal that a little baby will be joining our family in another two days. Such a joy.