Photo captions post:

I took a random subway photo somewhere in Shanghai. The only thing notable in this photo is the small LCD screen above the track that shows the time until the next two trains arrive, an plays commercials and news.

I made a trip to the office that handles foreigners in Shanghai to apply for a residence permit. They close for lunch, delaying my own lunch. On the way back, I stopped at a little place that served my 鱼香茄子 (translated as "candied eggplant" on their English menu!) on this great square china plate, with rice and boiled taro root slices. It was RMB 6, if I remember correctly (RMB 8 = USD 1).

On Saturday I went to the Huahai Road Starbucks across from Parksons for the montly Shanghai Expat website meet-up. Asa and I spent a long time chatting with folks at Starbucks and over lunch at this place called the Green Leaf (something like that). It was pleasant, but nothing special. I probably won't go again.

The convenience store below my apartment has some Pokky imitators in innovative flavors like Shrimp, and Cappuccino.

This morning I took a photo of the Hailida students lined up in the yard and singing the national anthem before the start of the schoolday. It looks like I'm really far away; in actuality, the kids are just really small.

On the way into town I change from the light rail to the subway at the Zhongshan Park station, and I always passed a little flower shop called Mantuoluo (曼陀罗) that looked like it offered more than just the standard cacti for sale as houseplants. But on the way home, I could never seem to find it. Well it turns out that there is more than one underground walkway to change from metro to lightrail, and that I had been taking different paths coming and going. Today I finally managed to find the flower shop on my way home, and I picked up a cute little Boston fern to put on the kitchen windowsill. I plan to pick up a few more plants for around the house.

At the recommendation of a Hailida Preschool room mother, I rode the metro all the way to its terminal station this morning, Xinzhuang Station. This also happens to be the first station of the new Line 5. I took some boring pictures of a sign, the ticket booths, and some passengers to post at Wang Jianshuo's weblog. You might be able to tell from the last picture that Xinzhuang Station is actually quite a nice place, with both northern and southern concourses, a la Shanghai Main Train Station.