It's been raining all day today, other than a nice big breakfast and a quick pop over to the knock-off mall to buy sunglasses, we're taking it easy for the afternoon. I've noticed that Shanghai doesn't smell so good when it rains- kind of a combination of wet dog and toxic chemicals. It's the sort of smell you can taste if you inhale too deeply, so I try to avoid breathing when possible. Much like last year, time is simultaneously crawling and flying. Yesterday was our hump-day. We officially hit the half-way point in our teaching contract, and while I can't believe we've already finished 3 weeks, last weekend feels like a million years ago. I had to actually go into Ola's room to ask her what we did this past week before I sat down to write this. Aside from Monday, which we both seem to have completely blanked out, we've managed to piece together our whereabouts for the rest of the week.

Tuesday night Ola and I hosted a little dinner party. We didn't actually do any of the cooking (since I've taken a no-cooking-til-I'm-home-and-I-have-to vow), but we provided the space and some beverages while other people arrived with tasty food. It was a fun night, but we were up much too late bypassing firewalls to watch Epic Meals- Fast Food Lasagna. The result was an entire week of random exclamations of "SOWCE!" in the staff room.

It's actually quite a fascinating experiment to throw eight virtual strangers together to live in very close quarters on the other side of the world. I realize that this is the basis of many popular reality TV shows, but since I don't watch those sorts of programs, I'm forced into just living it instead. In some ways it's almost like high school revisited. The most remarkable thing that I've noticed is how quickly we've started speaking alike. The combination of shared experience and constant proximity to one another has created an enormous number of inside jokes, and what starts out as teasing (since culturally we're an incredibly mixed bag) quickly worms its way into our regular speech patterns. Add to that my repeated gaffs in vocabulary choice when trying to speak Chinese and newly acquired Chinglish and even the most simplistic sentences have become flavoured with Shanghai.

As for the rest of our week, it was all the usual sort of stuff. We had a staff gathering where we were taught how to make dumplings, went for head and foot massages, and once again ended up in a KTV. Tomorrow we're heading to Hangzhou for a day trip that our gracious hosts are treating us to. Aside from the 6:30 departure time, I'm looking forward to it. So, I'm going to charge up my ipod, grab some cucumber fruit and tsai bao with sowce from the Family Mart, sit on my pengu and get a good night's sleep. Yeah Boi!!!