Starting week 2 in China.  The first week was very busy trying to get settled in to my new apartment.  Met my driver Frank who helped me with my grocery shopping and is trying to teach me Chinese.  Unfortunately, I'm not a very good student but still working on it.  Shopping for groceries takes a lot more time having to learn adjacencies in the store that are different than at home.  Not to mention the challenge trying to decipher labels.  And the meat department scares me for a variety of reasons.  I don't know why they have someone on a microphone seemingly calling out random phrases.  I did make it from the Luo Hu area to my apartment in the Futian area by subway.  I had Vincent in our office write the Chinese characters for my stop.  After a couple of attempts to find the stop on the ticket machine, I asked the gentleman behind me to assist.  I felt kind of dumb when he hit the English button.  Today, about 13 associates and family members from our office came by to see the apartment.  It was a lot of fun to host a Chinese get together with me attempting to have fruit, tea, and coffee for everyone prior to going to lunch.  Lunch was at Gaucho's, a Brazilian restaurant with a Chinese flair.  It was a lot of fun having everyone over and I hope we can do it again soon.  Enjoy some pictures from the week.

Pictures below are my the Shangri la Hotel where my apartment is located, the lobby of the hotel, fountain outside the hotel, the Walmart Supercenter, and some of the group that visited today.

Check back next week for more.
Jeff