HothAdventuresInChina: It's Been A While

Gosh, time in Shanghai has just flown by. The kids are settled into school as much as can be expected, Odis has been busy connecting with people that enjoy the outdoors and I’ve been swamped with work. It seems like we always have something going on; from school activities to an outing with friends, to seeing a part of Shanghai vicinity. Here’s a couple of things that someone in the Hoth family participated.

Lupu Bridge outing. As I’ve mentioned before, China is all about doing things big and making for tourists so profit can be generated.

This picture is Andrew and Eric with the two HP expat employees on the top of the Lupu Bridge. The Lupu Bridge is one of 4 major bridges crossing the Yuan Pu River in Shanghai. These bridges are massive like, almost as big as the Golden Gate. What’s really amazing is they have all been built since 1990.

Here’s a picture of the climbing up the bridge.

And finally, a picture with “Expo Gumby”! In 2010, the World Exposition Fair is coming to Shanghai China and this is their mascot HaiBao. The boys think he is completely evil which makes it a ton of fun to try to get pictures. He’s all over the city.

Regarding Expo 2010. The commercial development for Expo is absolutely mind boggling. I cannot begin to tell you how much construction is occurring. They say that the local bird is the “crane” and at any given time there are up to 4000 cranes operating in Shanghai. I would estimate that the Expo area is probably the size of Eagle from Chinden/Beacon Light to Highway 55/Highway 16. Also, they are adding an additional 3 subway lines in time for the Expo.

A couple of weeks ago my manager, Shari came to visit from Boise. After a very long week of meetings she and I took a trip up to Beijing.

It was an amazing experience and our trip to the Great Wall was truly beautiful. I spent an hour hiking the Great Wall . Just think when the Great Wall was built, there wasn’t any trucks to hall the equipment and stone. The power of humans!