It's time for July's cellphone snapshots round-up:

I had always been a skeptic of wontons. For the same price as a hearty bowl of noodles, I've always gotten sad little bits of meat wrapped in limp dumpling skins. Then I discovered Gill Wonton. So this is what wontons are supposed to be!

What are these Melodies so excited about?

... Somebody brought a bag of frogs in for lunch, and shared them with everybody. Yum!

Jodi has taken me twice to a little Hunanese restaurant just north of the Hongkou Stadium station. This place reminds me of restaraunts in Hangzhou: clean, professional, and serving excellent food. This time, we had chicken in a boiling pot, lotus root marinated in orange sauce with sweet red garnish, and diced pickled green beans (and another dish not pictured that I forgot). The food was medium spicy; I'm getting used to this stuff. The bathroom is the one of the cleanest I've been to in Shanghai, and it had paper towels for drying your hands.

One of the simple touches that make this restaurant a choice pick is that the rice comes steamed in little clay pots with a sweet jujube resting on top. Nice.

One Saturday night I met up with Jodi, Sandy and Jack for dancing at Shanghai's classiest seedy bar, Windows. It was fun to dance, but crickies! it's Windows!

After dancing, Jodi and I went across the street to Bifengtang for a quick dinner.

She says I have a knack for taking bad pictures of her.

One night this month, I hooked up with sjhs from SDF for a night on the town, which included a stop at Shanghai's hottest hip-hop club in 2005, Pegasus.

Hi sjhs. This picture is dark to match his heart.

One night I tagged along with the always awesome Asa to catch Lin Di and Co...

at the Ark. They came after a very cool band that I did not get the name of, which played drums, bass, sax and vocals over a recorded techno background. Good stuff, made me with there was a dance floor. So Cold Fairyland came on late, about 11:30, and managed to keep a crowd in the house all the way until a very late finish. Again, good stuff.

This month I went to my first, and hopefully not last, soccer game in Shanghai. Shanghai United played against Sevilla FC.

I sat in the expensive seats with the good view, and I was still surrounded by excited fans, lots of smokers, and a smattering of languages.

I hung out with Asa another night too. First we picked up bikes and rode over to this Macanese place for dinner. In the picture, you can see the green veggies, chicken in hot red pepper oil with peanuts, and crispy duck with sweet dipping sauce. This place was pretty delicious, if a little expensive (RMB 60 for the two of us). Afterwards, we went over to "Shanghai's best DVD shop", a couple blocks north of the Gubei Carrefour. I picked up the Mortadelo y Filemón movie, George Winston's Autumn, and a compilation of hits by 80s China rocker 迪克牛仔. Then we went back to Asa's apartment and watched a sappy Korean dance romance late into the night.

This is Jodi's hand on the night we stayed up till dawn with Lisa at the Bifengtang across from Windows, playing cards and the airplane-parchese game.

Here's one of my all-you-can drinks, a strawberry float, and one of the decks of cards we used to play all sorts of games that night.

That's it for now. Next month, expect for more pictures of kids as I get back to teaching classes and also of my business trip to Shiyan in Hubei province.