Shanah tovah!

Hag sameach and a year filled with sweetness to all of our dear Jews and all the rest of you. We're hoping our year will be - and last night was noticeably sweeter with the air-conditioning working (it was there, switched off, all along; we just hadn't realised that such a little box on the wall could make such a big difference ...). We have all had grumpy mouldy manky moments in the last while and I think we're each having scary culture shock feelings ("will there ever be any nice food??", "will it always be this hot, and will I ever get used to it?", "they're all laughing at me, aren't they?", etc.) and maybe its beginning to sink in that we have only each other as primary everyday companions and resource for much of the next ten months. That said, we are having fun also: a lovely cooling boat tour of the wide Huangpu River, past miles of towering skyscrapers, huge boats being refitted, coal barges, the tacky but amazing Oriental Pearl Tower; chats in the youth hostel with German sisters at the end of their China tour, and a wanderer from Wolverhampton; wandering ourselves through the old Chinese town bit of Shanghai where me and Melissa enjoyed an old-style Chinese garden and Heather and Rosa complained until they found a cool Starbucks to sit in. Enough - Heather will kill me if I don't leave this internet cafe and we're all hungry. More later - Mark