(Original post in Spanish)
After the welcome party held last night (I'll post the video once it is available), we have started our week-end going to deal with bureaucracy. Yes, inChina you can dream of that: dealing with public offices on a Saturday. And, moreover, they are eficient and nice: it took about 45 minutes to solve the paperwork (residence permit). I guess that there are not many people doing paperwork on a Saurday 9am. And I wonder if we can count us as people seeing our faces.

Afterwards, Clarissa and Eu Jin had organized a lunch in an Indonesian place. Clarissa is Signaporean and has been in Shanghai for a while and knew this place. We ended up being like 12 people (the organizing comittee are the ones sitting in front of me):

(There a lot more pictures in picasaweb)

Don't get fooled by the pictures: integration with the Chinese is not complete. Not yet. Most people you can see there are from countries nearby but not Chinese (there were 3 Chinese people, though). Food was really nice, lots of peanuts and spices. At the same time as enjoying a nice meal, lunch was very revealing: I can understand Clarissa's mandarin wo yao yi ge pitcher of lime juice. I am doing real progress.

Some pictures of funny moments:

Brian is his 70s look, with Sue-Hyun sunglasses

Sue-Hyun (aka, Charlotte) feeling as in the tropics


After a little debate on what to do next (massage, karaoke, go to a bookstore...), we decided to go for a walk. At last I can say I've been walking in Shanghai's downtown. 3 weeks it has taken me. We were by Jing'ansi buddhist temple:

Impressive contraste between the "old part" (temple) and the modern part. Although the contrast is way higher in the park just in front:

I liked this red light:

...and specially walking down a city centre and not in the expat suburban area the school is in and which is like 15 km away from downtown:

There are indeed nice and cosy streets and with high contrast:


In short, we have spent the day walking downtown (a real pleasure, such a shame the school is so far away, I'll have to study the feasibility of moving there and not wasting too much time commuting). Tomorrow we go to Tongli, a water town (with channels) very near Suzhou (another thing organized by EuJin).