Yuan pun: success!
Today is the day Sarah’s new flight arrives! I plan to greet her at the airport with a giant latte and maybe happy lady iced tea, hopefully that will make her feel better about coming a day late.
From the airport, the train to Liangmaqiao was a bit of an….escapade. Getting on the airport express was easy enough (and cheap!), but the subway only takes coins for fare. I only had a single one yuan coin from my purchase of happy lady iced tea from a vending machine, so I had to get someone to swap one of my one yuan bills for a coin. After a lot of helpless white girl face and gesturing, I managed to get some coins and be on my merry way.
The subway was just crowded enough to require me to use my skills of squishing-on-a-train-with-asians (thanks, Tokyo!). Unlike in the taxi queue last night, I did not run over anybody’s foot with my luggage. I was proud of that.
Rie’s directions were perfect and I made my way to their residential compound with no problem, and I was relieved to find someone who speaks one of my languages fluently in the guardhouse. The receptionist’s Japanese was much better than her English, so we decided to use that.
The kids came down to meet me at the gate. Giants! Daito usually has wheels attached to his feet in some fashion, he was riding a skateboard (and later, roller blades Rie bought when she was in college), and Ririka is much taller and glued to her iphone. Sarina was out with friends most of the time, and a little shy at first, but we had a nice conversation about fish poop together after dinner. I think we really bonded.
There are a lot of Japanese and German people here, mixed with a handful of other nationalities, so it doesn’t feel very much like China. Many of the embassies are close by, and there are a lot of expensive German cars driving around. The compound contains a starbucks, a strange burger chain called Faburger which apparently has restaurants in Las Vegas and LA, a gym (free! why didn’t I bring my running gear?!), and perhaps most importantly, a cheap spa place. Mmm, cheap massages…
So far, we’ve had tea, massages, gift time, and time to talk about fish poop. Later today, we’ll go find Sarah at the airport and plan the rest of our week.
And since I was awake at 3:30 am due to jet lag, I took some pics of the sunrise from our window…
