When it's one o'clock here, it's one o'clock there, what's the difference? Twelve hours.
While there is the obvious fact of distance separating me from my home, there is also the time difference. I couldn’t exactly comprehend what a twelve hour time difference meant until I lived it myself. Family members are not home when I leave for work and when I get home from work they’ve already left for work. Generally this means that communication with family is reserved for the weekend only. As far as friends go, generally only after 10pm will I have a chance to talk to them. You can take this how you like; personally I think it’s not so bad. I’m grateful to have the chance to talk to these people with the time I have.
I thought all you could eat was dog and snake...
The foods I miss are slowly starting to fill up my thoughts more and more with each passing day. I would love to be sitting at Qdoba or an all you can eat breakfast buffet right now. Sadly, these are not popular food choices among Chinese people. Luckily, Shanghai is home to just about every other food imaginable. Since arriving, I've managed to find suitable restaurants for Greek, German, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, American, Korean, Brazilian, Indian, and Mongolian. In terms of food stores, I know of several places to buy almost all of the foods I could possibly want. Sadly, this solution for food cravings comes with a markup of between two hundred and four hundred percent. For now I've managed my desire to buy these foods, preferring instead to save for travel. Although the desire to save for travel is strong, I expect at least once or twice I’ll cave in and spend $3 on a drink that costs $1 in America.
