Hi Everybody
We are back online again. Although the Chinese government still block all access to blogspot- blogs and our earlier way via anonymouse didnt work either, we found a new way to access the blog.
In our last post of 12th of August we announced that we would move to Shanghai. After our last weeks in Guangzhou (Andries got finally some real visitors to GZ) we went to France and later to Holland on holidays.
Although Dussen is very nice, we went up to the Norht to the pretty island of Schiemonnikoog. Compared with the polluted air in Guangzhou and Shanghai, it was very nice to get an oversuply of fresh oxygen which we could use to bring back to China.
Coming back from Schiemonnikoog to Dussen we stopped over in Giethoorn, so Charlotte now nows everything about Holland!
Then early September we went to China (Andries had to be in Guangzhou) so Charlotte received the movers and unpacked most of our stuff in our new house. The appartment is very convienently located in the center of Shanghai and we are still learning about China and the Shanghainese customs / traditions every day. Things like: walking in the evening in a small park in your pyama's before you go to sleep is very common, the same counts to lite fireworks for evey occasion (marriage, birthday, opening of a new store, full moon, cat pregnant, etc etc) so every day we see some fireworks in the old part of town. (as we are writing now, we can hardly hear each other, becasue of the noise of the fireworks). But firther more Shanghai is a very interesting and nice city. Really a mix of old Chinese tradition, western (high style) influence and all in all you can see that this city is booming, so nice period to live here now.
Luckely we met some people quickly and we rolled into the social network of Shanghai quite easily, so for the social part an improvedment compared with Guangzhou!
During last October Holidays we hopped over to neigbouring Japan.
In 8 days we visit 4 (ancient) capitals of this country. First started in Edo (Tokyo) than Kamakura and Kyoto and we finished in Narra. After visiting quite a few Asian countries last year, we were both surpised (although we knew) about finding such a sophisticated, quiet, western and "old" country in the middle of this continent. Japan in development is certainly 3 generations ahead of China, and it was really nice to travel here. Especially Kyoto which its green hills, parks and thousand temples was really impressive. See on the left the link of the photographs....
This weekend we celebrated Andries 33th birthday with a "surpirse" diner in an Indonesian restaurant and going clubbing in the Paramount. We first read about the Paramount as a restored art-deco 1920s building which apparantly still had its old grandeur. However we also read after it that recent refurbishment didnt have left a lot of this and now some of the floors had turned into a huge Chinese style night club. Anyway, information enough to check it ourselves and unfortunately indeed, we landed in this 1990s style of hard music, techno style night club, but we had a good night out!.
See on the right our pictures, hopefully we will update you a little bit more frequent now we found a new way to access our blog.
Greetings!
Charlotte & Andries
