Okay so it’s time to come clean. Shanghai is warmer than Washington DC, but it’s still not warm enough. Temperatures are probably in the 40s to 50s during the day, but once the sun goes down, it is freezing. We’ve been walking a lot so that keeps us warm mostly, except for the face, fingers, and toes. Those parts just go very numb. You’d think the apartment would offer relief from the cold…not so. The building lobby has beautiful leather couches and a coffee table but they only look inviting. The lobby temperature is the same as outside, especially with the doors flung wide open all day. I argue that the place would be warmer if the doors were shut, if only to keep out the winds. John insists it makes no difference when the place isn’t being heated anyway.

Fortunately, our apartment has heat– three room units. The problem is, we’ve only figured out how to turn on the one in the living room. I can’t read the remote control on the others which heat the bedroom. We tried pressing random buttons but all we got was cold air. So at night the family just huddles together under the goosedown blanket (thanks Sue!). Actually, we did kind of cop out. The landlord left us a super inefficient space heater, which I ran a lot in the beginning. But then I felt like a glutton sucking up all that electricity, so it’s off limits. We’ll just have to tough it out. I don’t feel so bad about my illiteracy though. Today I asked the building maintenance person Mr. Yang to show me how to use the remote. He said he didn’t know either… it was a complicated one that would require reading the manual. Good thing Nai and Yeb arrive today. They’ll get to read user manuals!

John and I went to Carrefour the other day. It’s very similar to a Super Wal-Mart. There’s a lot of English (we saw a lot of foreigners) and they even have customer service policies (regarding pricing and returns) which is unusual among most Chinese stores. The store has five floors and there are these ridged walkway escalators so shoppers can move between floors with their carts. All in all, a pretty good experience. We bought Betty Crocker pancake mix and were so excited for pancakes on the way home. Then we realized we forgot to buy syrup.