Adventures By Design

It’s been a busy couple of days. We’ve been trying to get our apartment marginally organized before the painters come, and packing and preparing for our trip to Canada.

Inca isn’t coming with us to Canada this time. Until we can figure out a way to avoid the week-long quarantine, we feel is it is just too stressful for her. For this holiday she is going to have a great time staying with our friends Ryan and Maggie, and their dog Button. Button is a five month old Golden Retriever who loves to wrestle with—and chew on—Inca. At first Inca seems a little annoyed, and growls a little, but her resistance is soon eroded, as she realizes that Button just won’t go away. Our new apartment complex (Landmark Skylight, Hu Zuo An in Chinese which translates less poetically but more precisely to ‘left shore of the lake’) seems great for dogs so far. There is lots of green space away from cars and scooters, and Maggie found a small field that’s a great place for the dogs to run, chase balls and play. Inca loves getting off-leash because she can actually get away from Button and have the upper hand as she taunts Button to chase her.

Yesterday were picked up on our apartment doorstep and driven to our hotel in Shanghai, compliments of the school (we’re pretty spoiled sometimes). We chilled out in the air conditioning for a while (Shanghai’s daily highs are around 37 degrees these days) and then headed out to the doctor for a check-up on Gin and the Sea Monkey before we headed to Canada. It was a pretty uneventful visit as everything is still going perfectly with Operation Gestation. Gin was given a baggie full of white powder, and although it made her feel a little funny to snort it, she was quickly informed by the nurse that it’s for a glucose test next month.

After leaving the doctors we headed for a grueling trek through the heat to find a shop Gin had heard about, Mothercare. Apparently it’s a great maternity and baby shop from the UK. After walking past loads of high-end watch shops we finally found the place and spent the next hour or so checking out baby stuff and test-driving strollers. We think we’ve found the stroller we want, and will go buy it when we get back next month. The manager was friendly and informative and showed us all kinds of stuff. Before we left he told us he could post the stroller to Suzhou for us when we bought it, and then proceeded to give us a onesie, a VIP discount card, and 200RMB (about $30 CDN) in gift certificates even though we didn’t buy a single thing. Apparently they’re hoping for our customer loyalty.

Now we’re at the Shanghai Pudong Airport, waiting to check in. Unfortunately, unlike virtually all the other airports we’ve been in, Pudong does not have free wireless. Grrrr. Although, given the hyperactive state of the Great Firewall of China, even if we could get on the net, we may not be able to access anything anyway.