Life of a yummy baby ... and now there are 2!!!!!

Sept 11 2006 - a most auspicious day to fly as we noticed how quiet the airport was when we took off from Birmingham that morning. Nothing unusual on board apart from the fact that there were coincidentally 6 other Chinese babies ranging from age 3.5 months to 1.5 years old on the same connecting flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai. Have babies, will travel!

In Shanghai we had grey skies for the next few days. Funny to think that it was sunny at 28 degrees when we left England!

I have no idea who this statue (with the surname 'Chen' and lived from 1901-1972) is except that he wears a communist party suit and looks rather dignified in the way he stands. Its as though he's standing against the rise of capitalism in fast-developing Shanghai, overlooking the Bund.
















Blind man on the street playing er-hu.











Old streets of Shanghai ...



















& the "newly-restored" tourist park YuYuan Market .....









and ......
Macdonalds in Chinese!!!!!

For some reason Morgan did not look very impressed in the picture.





Our mates - Jon, Etik and Yasmine from the UK - who now live in the greeny suburbs of the industrial part of Shanghai, Pudong. Thanks to Jonny's teaching post as a reception teacher in a British international school, we get our free b&b here -



and I simply love riding Yasmine on their bicycle!