Pointless Trip

So we just wasted 2 weeks in Shanghai.  Apparently Guilford’s business license was out-of-date because the Chinese government was supposed to do an inspection and they haven’t gotten around to doing it on time.  So, this same government is delaying our residence visas and Adam’s work permit until the business license is fixed.  The inspection won’t happen until after the week long holiday that’s coming up in the first week of October.  We’re going home tomorrow as planned, but now we have to come back again in October.  So, more road trips for Smudgie.  I’m mostly angry because eating out every meal in Shanghai is expensive, and also fattening.

So since we haven’t been doing anything, this blog will just be a bunch of random pictures.  I did get a new lens for my camera, which was more expensive than I wanted it to be.  But since I was already paying a lot, I decided to upgrade to a lens with super zoom because there have been many times when I wished I could’ve zoomed farther.  I used to have an 18-55mm and now I have a 75-300mm.  It may be a little overboard, though, because now I can’t take normal pictures of things that are right in front of me.  The picture below was taken from across 4 lanes of traffic, and this is with the least amount of zoom I could do: 

Smudgie is letting me know he doesn’t have to poop by sitting on my feet:

A trash can with a special receptacle for dog poop:

Smudgie playing in our bed linens:

A hoard of people doing light exercise outside of a mall:

Really cool octopus sign:

 

 

In other news, even though I haven't studied Chinese in a while, I surprised myself by being able to understand a couple of people this past week.  At a restaurant we accidentally ordered something that had a lot of peppers in it because from the pictures they just looked like green vegetables.  I tried one and made a face and the waitress said, "Zhege la ma?"  Which means "Is it spicy?"  And I was able to say "Yes!  Too spicy."  Then we were in a taxi today and the driver turned around and told us there was a traffic jam so he was going to go another way.  Actually, I only understood the words for "traffic jam", but that's really all I needed to know in order to tell him, "meiyou wenti!" which means  "no problem!".