Chai, food, nap, chai, nap, food, food, nap, chai, chai.

Ah India - how I missed thee. between all the chai, napping and food there wasn't much time to even relax during my CNY vacay in india! geez.

No but seriously...talk about a true vacay - relaxing, amazing food, family, friends, bad hindi, yoga, naps, chai and servants.

I'll start with a bit of hilarity - woke up one morning with a nice little bug bite on my eye lid. yes i would indeed admit, this more resembles a turn-your-face-fat-iphone-app photo (hey, i ate my weight's worth of food while i was there), but i seriously couldn't open my eye for the whole day. sexy.

luckily this was the last day of my trip so it did not interfere with the eating, sleeping, eating routine i had.

the main purpose of my trip was to visit my grandparents in ahmedabad staying with my uncle and aunt (uncle happens to be my mom's brother and aunt is my dad's sister). my mom is also there for a couple months to stay with my grandparents and is also volunteering/consulting at a museum there to fill in the gaps between eating and napping. here's a pic of me and gma. i showed her and my gpa how to use the ipad and they were so confused/intrigued. perhaps because my broken hindi didn't quite explain it properly "hindi hindi APPLE hindi hindi AWESOME hindi hindi TECHNOLOGY hindi hindi EXPENSIVE" hahaha. alas, we got some good pics

aside from being the jolliest grandmom around, she is also an amazing cook and has trained our house cook and my mom very well. upon my arrival, i was asked to make a list (and scream it to her...hey she's in her 90s and often doesn't wear her hearing aids) and every single thing was fulfilled x10 - aloo paratha, cabbage subzi, doodi, eggplant subzi, bakari, besin ladoo, meeti dahl, black dahl, dahl with chonk, biryani, pulao, rus malai, and at least 5-6 chapathis with each meal. holy crap. seriously i havent eaten like that since i had a 2" growth spurt when i was 13 (and i'm not talking about height).

in the midst of the eating, i also finally reunited with devanshi and her fam after 1 full year of being apart. she came for the weekend to stay with her fam and hang with me. we had a jolly time frolicking the city, getting facials and also spending some QT with both of our families.

we went from museum tours with the fams...

to mockail shots in the new mall food court.

now if you know anything about india, gujarat (where ahmedabad is) is a dry state. no alcohol sold or allowed in and out. EXCEPT if you're a foreigner. my mom gave me a tall order to bring stuff in (a handle of vodka or gin, a bottle of dry red wine) but unfortunately some flight problems prohibited me from attaining said goods in time for my trip. in search of some fun, dev, ani and i went to the mocktail bar at the mall - the busiest of stalls - to have a drink. the bartender was handy with his mixing and within several minutes we had three very syrupy, sweet, non-alcoholic mocktails. partayyy. actually now that i think about it, we all got sick after this - similar to having real cocktails back in nyc. good times.

i mentioned we visited a museum with our fams - it was a really wholesome day. we went to the museum where my mom is working and got some great tours of the grounds/exhibits. the concept is really cool; this lady lost her daughter when she was very young and to help her cope, her parents gave her some money to dedicate to helping other children in india. the lady started an orphanage and school in ahmedabad. the concept of the school is very experimental - they don't use text books or exams, but learn solely from experience. they invested in artifacts, costumes, props, etc for the kids to learn from and used those to create some really cool museums for the students to learn in and for outsiders to enjoy. in the children's museum there is a full skeleton of an elephant. huge and probably the coolest thing ive seen in awhile - imagine if you were 10 yrs old learning from that! so cool. there is also a peacock area and a deer farm (along with a pool, library, amphitheater, etc). in the gujarat exhibit, this fine peacock decided to join our tour.

after the museum, our fams went to feast at Bikanerwala (a famous snack chain in india) for lunch - pani puri, veg manchurian, hakka noodles, dahi puri, dosas, paneer tikka, rus malai, all washed down with a fresh lime soda. hot damn. how could i leave such an oasis of food.

from our jolly trip to the museum, i found out that devanshi's mom does yoga every day at a nearby temple. i asked her to take me the following day. she picked me up in a rickshaw the next morning at 10 am and i crashed a super serene yoga sesh. now you might wonder what yoga is like in india. well, i'm told, it is without doubt, 'real yoga'. second, this particular one is mixed with some religious spiritual prayers, and third, it is amazing. this is the hall in which it is held.

beats yoga to the people in the astor place walk up or even the beloved studio anya in flat iron. needless to say, i was the only one that couldn't touch my toes or really do any of the poses properly but it was surely an experience i will not soon forget (mostly bc it will be the last time i exercise for awhile).

along with all these great things, i got to eat more, hang out at the equivalent of a nice country club, spend qt with my grandparents, go shopping and take lots of naps. it's to the point that i actually need to rest my eyes every day at 3 pm now and promptly need a caffeine shot and a snack immediately after. it will take a few months to get over this amazing trip.

this week i have my first shanghai guests coming and i'm moving into my own place! overwhelmed with excitement and furiously researching places to go so i look a bit more local than i actually am. to preemptively celebrate i had a vodka/grape drink today (vodka via duty free shop, grape drink via costco-like store across the street, i bought it in bulk so i must finish it before i leave this place). photos of new place + familiar faces to come. 

You Walk Like a New Yorker

It's almost Chinese New Year baby!!! which means a week long vacay and lots of candy aka several cavities to factor into my shanghai budget. AND loads of overtime paid to the workers outside my hotel for soft launching the opening of the "HUGE mall" and this awesome dragon boat CNY decor. impressive. unfortunately nothing is open in the mall but all the windows aren't boarded up anymore! here i've found...it's all about small wins.

I also got a suspicious knock on my hotel door this evening, while blasting drake on pandora and munching on sweet chili flavored 'toss' chips (unabashedly resembling a can of pringles). twas the hotel manager with a gracious and beautifully wrapped chinese new year gift. he eagerly explained it was 'traditional chinese' and as i closed the door i thought 'sweet, i can re-gift this to my team'. but then i opened it and found this:

is it a fish?! is it an ornament? is it a marzipan koi?! it's shrink wrapped AND has a preserving pack in it (similar to the ones in my aldo shoe boxes). i'm sure all you chinese peeps out there are laughing at my ignorance...or my inability to notice that it's something as obvious as a chinese new year chocolate fish (a la the easter bunny). i shall find out tomorrow when my team opens it! ha!

in other news, i did do something cooler than use my vpn on american websites and eat imitation american food! fellow pennster jo tong took me to this awesome cafe behind A SNEAKER STORE. how can one match all my soul's fulfillment in one space - food, kicks, nixon watches, menus in english, hipster crowds and asian djs/store keepers. seriously how. after slurping my tasty melt-in-your-mouth pork belly noodle soup and a bite or six of lemon curd cake, it was time to take to the art galleries and continue the hipster trend for the evening...

Found some great galleries and another awesome cafe featuring the tastiest teas in town. thanks to jo for taking me around! best compliment of the night was 'you walk like a new yorker'! not sure it was a compliment at the time :P but i loved it!

In some housing news, soon i shall depart the hotel room. when i get back from india, i'll be moving to a permanent locay. on the way back from withdrawing my US account clean to pay for this apt, i passed by another building my agent took me to see, near a park. i had seen it at night and it was like seeing an apt in central park at midnight on a sunday. creepy and intriguing. but same location on saturday noon - amazing and wholesome. i had a bit of non-buyer's remorse until i passed the same park and realized this was not the place to air out all my dirty laundry. ha...ha. c'mon you're laughing...i can hear you.

tomorrow i plan to attend a very non-assuming expat event at a bar appropriately titled "The Geisha". posts to follow...

Don't Stampede

So I have survived week 1 in Shanghai. Pretty good week filled with more ups than downs! Success. I am not feeling particularly witty today so unfortunately the pictures will have to speak for themselves.

Work has been great, same job just here in Shanghai. Makes it much easier when your entire team is in one time zone! I could get used to this...

I've been to the Gap offices here before my move but for some reason I never caught this sign inside the bathroom stall until now.

Now usually I stampede to the bathroom because I really have to go but never did I associate it with this image. If this does actually occur, I'm glad there is a warning against it. I'm just afraid of the repercussions if you actually do stampede as per above picture. Perhaps a finding for my next post!

In other work news, I mentioned that we had a CNY party and it was pretty awesome. There were loads of skits, leadership teams rapping, lion dances and best of all, giveaways. Not only did I get this amazing Lock&Lock Glassware set to use in my new hotel room...

but I actually also won an i-phone 4s!!! Here's me with the lucky #! It's going to be a good year. Mainly because people here will pay over $1,000 for the new iphone so I'm in the money! I can finally afford the delivery charge to my boonies hotel.

Apparently people are not fessing up the videos of our skit involving my Beyonce dance but I'm pretty sure they exist and either a. people just don't understand my awkward english when I ask if they 'captured my tantalizing single lady showdown' and/or b. it's already on youtube under "feng meiguoren" (crazy american).

So one thing I really wanted to do here was start becoming a regular at certain places or at least just the only Indian girl a shop/restaurant knows. I have already found my nail place. Hidden in this dark alley on Nanjing Lu is a small gem of a nail salon subtly entitled Villa de Nail. Those nimble and precise hands are just too good to avoid. This hand-painted creation was the 'fashionista sexy pick' for a festive (note the red and gold color palette) yet vogue nail art. also...they speak english. enough to understand 'ow' and other passive aggressive comments you might say when getting your nails done (e.g. oh...that's what it looks like with two coats?). After a half hour of gossiping in chinese, they even had the courtesy to confirm that I didn't understand them. OBSESSED.

Now my focus for the next four days is HOUSE HUNTING. seen several choices but haven't landed the plane yet and things are getting snatched up! Hopefully these nails will show the landlords how serious i am. Wish me luck...

wo bu dong

despite having spent a few hundo on chinese classes before trekking over to shanghai, when i land all i can say is 'wo bu dong'. not bad. the 3 yr old next to me on the 14 hr flight put me to shame - speaking english to his dad, spanish to his mom and chinese to the other annoying 3 yr old sitting behind us.

before i got here, i was warned by other expats that my temp housing was in the boonies. like dont have to look both ways when crossing the street in a city of 22 million boonies. so far that there is a costco-like store for locals across the street (not a bad thing, it's where i spend my spare time) and despite having a sherpas delivery guide in the hotel room itself, no merchant will actually deliver to the hotel (with the exception of pizza hut thank goodness).

alas but it is chic! and sparkling new! and there's a renaissance hotel next door...opening in 2 years. so i fit in quite well. i am also the only guest. hahaha. it's a straight shot on the subway to work so it's fine for now and i think i get a badge of street cred with the locals each time we pass the city limit subway stops and i'm still on the train.  the three floor loft layout gives my glutes a good work out too.

i also pass by this amazing shopping mall construction, appropriately titled "HUGE shopping mall" on the way out of the hotel to the subway. its slogan is creative and really touches the heart. i literally chuckle out loud every time i pass it and re-read it just in case i misread the first time. nope. still awesome.

ok so all this sounds so gloomy but actually im having a ton of fun and have already gained about 4 1/2 lbs from yang's dumplings and pizza hut delivery. win! this thursday we have our gap chinese new year parttaayy at the marriott (4 pm - 10 pm!)! whoa buddy, that's quite a step up from the 1/2 hour open bar and mozz stix at puffy's tavern in tribeca before the holidays. ill take it. each team has to do a skit and let's just say my role involves a very non-pc pigtail braided native american wig and a solo dance to a certain beyonce song indicative of my marital status aka why i moved to china. pics to follow.

off to watch zhongguo's got talent. yup, in chinese.