Traffic

Getting to work consists of a bus that picks us up on the corner of our street and after various turns we stop to pick up others that work at the school. The trip takes about 40 minutes in total. Traffic in Shanghai is pretty much constant. I have gotten in traffic jams at 11pm on a Friday and some traffic last until 1 am. On the bus our driver maneuvers around bikes, massive tricycles with a bed that is filled with cardboard, plastic, fruit, wardrobes or a variety of anything you could imagine you would want or not want to haul on a bike. The freeway is normally packed and we are above the streets and level with people’s laundry hanging from their windows to get drip dried in the smog and smells of the day. Construction is another constant in Shanghai, after bussing to work for the last month and passing the same construction sites we have seen projects finish in the month. New freeways are being added and there is a crew of people that only work on scaffolding here. Each day we see men in workers’ clothes standing on polls 20 meters above the ground on steel piping they use to construct cubes patterned scaffolding. No hard hats, no safely lines. They never seem to be working but just hanging out on the piping waiting for more supplies or just for the traffic to die down.
Once we are off the freeway that is when more of the adventure happens. To quote myself “We are driving on the wrong side of the road again, he does that a lot”. Our driver (now mom don’t freak out there are actually not a lot of accidents here) plays chicken with the on coming traffic so that they will go into the shoulder lane. Once in a while he will get back into the proper land by cutting of someone else, but always giving the polite Shanghai honk that continually fills the air.