Old Friends, Old Town, Somerville Student, and Dumplings

I went to one of Shanghai's 'old town' areas tonight. Here is a really sweet picture of it. I went with Joy Zhang, who is one of my undergraduate students from Somerville (she's from Shanghai), and her mother. Joy knew that I sought dumplings, so we went to her favorite dumpling place. We also walked around to soak up the scenery, and I took some seriously awesome pictures. Competition for today's photoblog entry was absolutely fierce, so just wait until you see other pictures from today in my the picture gallery I post for my visit to China.

Yesterday I had dinner with Anatole Faykin, a Lloydie (class of 1996) who is living in Shanghai right now. He's lived here before, and he tends to move around a lot. I hadn't seen him since my birthday party in 2009---he was living in London at the time. I plan to see him again before I go. I am also planning to see Chris Shu, a fellow 1994 Beverly High grad, who I haven't seen since graduating from Beverly (or possibly early in summer 1994)! He's been living in Shanghai for many years. He started using an English name when he moved there; he used his Chinese name when he was at Beverly.

My lecture course on networks has also been very rewarding. I have worked very hard for the course on this trip, but the whole experience has been wonderful thus far---with lots more cool stuff on the way.

Oh, and I also saw a store whose name reminded me of a name of another old friend of mine (and, indeed, a friend who is actually from Shanghai).