I woke up today to welcome my third morning in Shanghai. I miss my internal clock. I have faith it will return when it's good and ready, but it is my internal clock after all, so it's bound to be stubborn. Crossing the dateline always messes with me; arriving some place to find that today is actually tomorrow and yesterday never really happened is a little uncomfortable, but par for the course I suppose.

So far this is a different sort of travel than I'm used to. We got greeted at the airport and shuttled to our new home- an apartment in central Shanghai. I'm sharing a large three bedroom apartment with two of my co-workers. We have four televisions, four phones, two bathrooms, two balconies and a decent sized kitchenette. The couches and dining room chairs are plush and comfy and the beds are large and…firm. They seem to have forgotten to put mattresses on top of the box springs, or at least that's what my back and shoulders are telling me, but with the assistance of a little melatonin I'm mostly sleeping through the night.

We spent Saturday wandering and getting acquainted with the neighbourhood. Anna K, who had been here for a couple of months already, was fabulous for showing us around. There were a lot of us out and that certainly slowed down the process of getting places, but it was great to get to know the other women on my trip a little better. And I'm getting very adept at waiting for people- a necessary skill to hone when in China.

We stopped into a grungy little hole in the wall and had what we've come to refer to as "basket soup" for lunch. Aptly named because you're handed a basket to fill with whichever ingredients you're brave enough to ingest (keep in mind that nothing is actually identifiable), and they boil and spice all the bacteria out of it- yum. Dinner was had at the most fantastic, and slightly more upscale, Shanghainese restaurant; I think I'm in love with the food here!!!

We then went for foot massages which included neck, shoulder and back rubs, as all good foot massages should do. Wooden boxes with burning embers were strapped to our feet and our legs were hammered with rubber mallets; it was seriously fabulous. The masseurs spent most of the time talking about us and wondering how much I could understand of what they said. Of course the only parts I caught were the contemplation of my language skills followed by them deciding whether any of them spoke enough English to ask; they were comfortable reciting the alphabet up to "D" so no conversation ensued. It's a little disconcerting to realize I speak more of the language than anyone else in my group, but in the few days I've been here my Chinese is slowly coming back. If anyone relies on me to actually convey information we may be in trouble though.

Yesterday was a relaxing, very slow afternoon walking around Fuxing Park where the locals hang out to dance, sing and practice some bizarre form of the statue game. We took turns inhaling alien "air" particles that tickled our throats and caused a musical chorus of choking; we figure a few more days of breathing the Shanghai pollution and we'll be practiced enough to take our melodic ensemble on tour. I had forgotten what it was like to live in a place where you can't tell if it's going to rain or is just a good day for industry. Speaking of which, I'd better get going, 'cuz I think it's going to rain…maybe…

I'll try to update this twice a week if any of you are interested. I start work tomorrow, so wish me luck!!