News from China!

This morning I was talking to Keith on Skype and he had so much to tell me, I asked him to write it down so I could share it on the blog.

As for me and the girls? We've had some laughs, some tears, some good days and some really, really bad days. But we're hangin' in! 4 days left until we're all together again! I'll try to post tomorrow about some of our adventures. In the meantime, here's a post from Keith's perspective in Shanghai. (Be sure to watch the preview video of the World Expo that he gets to attend this weekend! Jealous!)


Cindy asked me to write a recap of my time here so far, so here goes:

I was in China for three days before I actually had any Chinese food. There is food here from every nationality. I have tried German, Indian, Korean, Thai, Italian and Japanese. German was good, but the Indian... not so much. I have been forced to learn to eat with chop sticks, or go hungry. Yesterday I was picking up peanuts with chop sticks and eating them. So I'm getting much better.

Most of the Chinese restaurants here have quite a different format for eating. Everyone at the table orders what they like and it is delivered and placed in the middle of the table. Then everyone shares everything. Some of the tables even have a rotating center. When we've eaten at places like this, the food just keeps coming and a LOT of food gets wasted. Also in the nicer restaurants, each party is given a private room. So the only people in the room are you, your friends and the waitress. It's very nice.

I have tried more kinds of foods on this trip than I thought I would ever consider eating. Some of the things I recall are Eel, dove, various types of dumplings, fish, and other items I didn't recognize. After a few nights of this, I was glad to have spaghetti at the Italian restaurant.

As for work...we work really long hours. Work consumes the entire day, and I think that's the culture here. You go to work in the morning after breakfast and you don't go home until after dinner. So I usually leave the hotel about 7:30 in the morning and return around 10:00 PM. But the China Autoliv people have been extremely hospitable. They have made sure our stay is has been a good experience. We have been escorted everywhere we've gone so far, and I'm pretty sure it will be that way the whole trip. The plant manager here even scored us some tickets to the World Expo which is in Shanghai this weekend. Apparently tickets are really hard to get, especially for it's second day open.

I have a very hard time communicating with many of the people here. I can't understand them even when they're speaking English. They speak softly and with a strong accent. This combined with my fair hearing is making it a little difficult to get things done. I also forget that I have my own version of slang that I use (Cindy understands me...but that's about it) and have been left with a lot of confused looks. Then I remember I have to restate things simply, and eventually things get figured out.

I have been communicating with Cind and the girls using Skype, which is a free Internet video communication service. As well as text messaging and and occasional phone call using the international cell phone provided by Autoliv. I am sharing this phone with my co-worker, so I don't always have it with me, but I try to call whenever I have a few minutes. It's been a pretty big challenge staying in touch because we are virtually in opposite times of one another. When Cindy's getting up with the kids in the morning, it's late at night here and I'm getting ready for bed. My lunchtime is at around 10 at night for her. It's pretty crazy.

Late Thursday night while I was talking with Cindy on Skype, my room phone rang. It was an Asian lady on the phone and I had no idea what she was saying....then I heard the words "You want sex? I come to your room... 800 RMB." (That's approximately 117 us dollars, for anyone who might be wondering.) It was a prostitute. I promptly turned her down, hung up the phone and went back to talking to my wife.

I had a hard time sleeping that night and made sure I deadbolted the locks. Shanghai is a huge city. I don't know if maybe she was tipped off about Americans at the hotel (got to keep the Americans happy) or if it was just a random call. Kind of creepy though.

But at least now I have a good story to tell the guys back in Brigham City.
Anyway that's it for now. I need some sleep. (And by the way the beds here are like sleeping on a concrete floor.)

I hope Cindy edited this for me.

Keith