When we took our exploratory trip to Melbourne, we experienced dramatic weather shifts each day. Sunny and calm, to bone chilling wind and torrential rain, to hail .... a cycle that would repeat several times each day. The sun and bone chilling wind were to be expected, but everybody we talked to inevitably said "it's never like this" when referring to the rain/hail. In their defense, they had been in a seven-year drought. We loved Melbourne, but we lived through 18 months of dramatic weather shifts and rain. In fact, we seldom left the house without raincoats if we thought we'd be out for more than an hour.
Fast forward to our Shanghai exploratory trip and it was a bit of a different story. Every day of that week was sunny, sixty degrees, and clear skies. Fantastic! It should be noted that nobody really commented on the great weather we had.
Since we arrived on January 13th, we have been in a state of "Unhealthy" to "Hazardous" air quality. Yeah I know. All the news organizations keep talking about Beijing and all the extreme measures they put in place to combat the issue, but we're choking on a massive amount of PM 2.5 particulates here as well. Not sure why nobody seems to care about us, but inevitably people here say "it's never like this". I hope they're right. It's disconcerting walking outside into this:
 |
| Out our hotel window |
 |
| From the streets. That building with the spaceship looking thing on top is about 300m away. |
 |
| The road from Shanghai to Qingpu. There are buildings in this picture. It is a difficult task to find a place you've never been to, in a city you've never stepped foot in, in a country where you don't speak the language in these conditions. |
 |
| A clear, sunny day in Shanghai from our first trip. More please. |
No comments:
Post a Comment