Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai...OH MY!!!

Nee-how from Hong Kong & China!    

 

April 3, 2008…Hong Kong

Today we arrived in Hong Kong, that’s right, Hong Kong, not China.  One of the fun facts that I have learned is that Hong Kong and China are not one in the same.  Although Hong Kong is technically part of China, they each have their own government.  Anyways we are in Hong Kong, only 2 days after leaving Vietnam.  2 days between ports is becoming more and more hectic.  I barely have time to do anything; I unpack, clean up my stuff (or attempt to), try to catch up on sleep, try to digest everything I just saw in the last country, and then re-pack my bags for the next port.  There is barely any time to breathe, let alone study for exams and do papers.  I have learned to not really worry about my schoolwork; the more tired I am after port, the more I took in, and the more I am learning.

 

I got off the ship with Kristin, Candice, Qi, Bill Aron (a good-looking, slightly creepy, younger Professor who can relate more to the students than he can to the majority of the queer faculty), and Greg.  Qi is from China, so I thought he would be the best person to walk around with in Hong Kong…I was wrong.  Like I said, Hong Kong and China…not the same thing.  Qi speaks Mandarin and the people of HK speak Cantonese…and I, I speak English.  This is the first port that there really is a language barrier.  Usually I kind of have an idea of what the people are saying, but here I have no idea!  We used a map and kept showing it to people on the streets, pointing to the place we wanted to go to.  After a lot of walking around and a ferry ride, we made it to Maxim’s restaurant for Dim Sum.  Dim Sum is a traditional style Chinese meal, where you are served lots of smaller portions of different foods and you put them on a lazy susan in the middle of the table so everyone can share!  Waiters and waitresses were carting around dumplings, different meats, steamed pork & vegetable buns, among other traditional dishes.  They all try to put a plate of food on your table; they put it down and attempt to walk away.  If you don’t want to try the food, you have to stop them and tell them NO, otherwise…you pay!!!  I tried a lot of the food, mostly because it was hard finding out what it was and I was really hungry.  There was however 1 dish that I didn’t try…Chicken Fingers! Typically, Chicken fingers are one of my favorite things to eat; not the case in HK.  Qi ordered our table chicken fingers…and they literally were CHICKEN’S FINGERS!!!  They had bones in them and looked all finger-like.  Gross!  All in all, lunch was a fun, cultural experience. 

 

After lunch, Candice, Kristin and I split up from the guys to go get our Japan Rail Pass.  Once again…the language barrier.  We had no idea how to ask people where to go and we had no idea what people were saying to us.  After a while of walking around HK, we found the building and ordered our rail passes.  We had to go back at 1730 (2 and a half hours) to pick up our JRP, so we used our time wisely and took a cab to the Ladies Market.  This time, we had a sheet of paper that had “Ladies Market” written out in Cantonese.  I didn’t really buy much at the Ladies market because I was told that the Pearl Market in Beijing was 100x bigger, cheaper, and better…I can’t wait!  Don’t get me wrong though, I still bought a few things.  The Ladies Market was outdoors and was basically stand after stand after stand.  They had everything from toys, to t-shirts, to bags, to glasses, to fans and chopsticks!  After the market, we went back to the Travel Agency, picked up our JRP and then made our way back to the ship to shower and get ready for the night. 

 

If I had to describe Hong Kong, I would say that it is kind of like NYC, but much cleaner and filled with a lot of neon lights.  Tonight I went out with Kristin and a bunch of kids she goes to school with at Bucknell.  One of her school friends, Kirk, is studying abroad in HK and was taking them to all the hotspots for the night, so I joined in.  Our first stop was  7-11 to pick up a few bottles of Vodka to drink as we watched the light show. Every night in Hong Kong, there is a famous light & laser show at 8:00pm over the Victoria Harbor. The show was awesome! Skyscrapers, buildings and lasers lit up to that beat of the music that was being played.  The cityscape across the water was incredible.  After the light show, we walked to a Mexican Restaurant for dinner.  I have wanted Mexican food for so long; I got tacos, chips, and guacamole…delicious! 

 

After dinner we made our way to an area close by called Soho.  Hong Kong had nightlife like I’ve never seen before!  There must have been at least 20 bars on this one street.  There was another street that ran parallel with just as many bars.  The bars were all open to the outdoors and were situated up on a hill.  The scene was CRAZY!  Many of the bars had Ladies night, so I got to drink for free!  As the evening progressed, the streets that ran through the bar area were packed shoulder to shoulder with people drinking and dancing. There was a nice mix of SASers, Americans, Europeans, and locals.  This has been one of my favorite nights out so far on this trip.  Krisitn, Derek, Zac Efron and I left around 0200 to go back to the ship.  I could have stayed up all night long with Hong Kong’s nightlife!  When I got back to the ship, it didn’t take me long to fall asleep.  I woke up to my roommate laughing at me, as I had fallen asleep with my light up sunglasses on that I bought while out in Soho.  Vendors were going around selling light up glasses and light up pins…kind of weird, but, of course, I bought a pair. 

 

I would have to say that I felt very safe being out in HK.  I had a great time in my short stay and hope to go back there someday.

 

 

April 4, 2008- Going to Beijing

I woke up at 0900, showered, packed my bags for Beijing, and went with Kristin to a nearby Starbucks for a Vanilla latte!  Today was mostly a travel day.  The flight to Beijing was one of the longer flights I have had on SAS- 3 hours.  I sat with Andy and Adam on the plane, where I got the chance to nap, talk with the two of them, and play cards (I love playing cards and I love Tennessee boys)!  Southern boys are all so nice! 

 

After our flight we had an hour-long bus ride before we arrived at Tsianghu University (pronounced Ching-Gwa).  Tsianghu University is often referred to as the Harvard of China and we were staying at a big guesthouse on campus for the next 3 nights.  Apparently this guesthouse is much nicer than the students’ dorms…I don’t think I want to see what their dorms look like.  A few weeks before this trip, Kristin and I put a request in to share a room together, so I was happy about that.  Sometimes it is nice to share the room with someone you know and are comfortable with.  The beds were kind of hard, but like I’ve said before, compared to the world that is nothing to complain about; I should be grateful that I even have a bed to sleep in. 

 

We got to the guesthouse, dropped our bags off in our room, and went to the guesthouse cafeteria for dinner.  Dinner was pretty good- dumplings, white rice, and chicken.  Once again, I am not sure what was in the dumplings…but I ate them.

 

After dinner, Kristin, Caroline, Charlotte, Sarah, Alyssa, and I attempted a night out in Beijing.  We asked the lady at the front desk of our guest house to write in Mandarin on a sheet of paper a place we could go to, to drink, sing and dance.  We showed this sheet of paper to a cab driver who took us to a place called KTV; KTV was literally a place that you could go to, to sing and dance and drink….soda.  Not what we had in mind.  Tickets to get into KTV cost 159 Yuan, about $20, so we decided to leave.  Plus, none of us had the guts to get up on stage and sing soberly for a big crowd.  So the challenge began…finding a bar in Beijing.  We walked around the streets of Beijing for a while, hoping to spot a bar, but we had no luck.  We finally bumped into a young couple that happened to speak English and was able to understand that we were looking for a young, fun crowd and a bar.  The guy told our cab drivers where we wanted to go and we were off once again.  The place we wound up going to was called the Black Lake Area, and it was exactly what we wanted!  Street after street was filled with bars and shops with really cute things to buy.  There were regular bars and hookah bars, and the workers were on the streets advertising their bars to passersby’s.  I think they do this because there are SO many bars to choose from, at least 100.  The bar area was really cool.  The bars and restaurants lined 2 huge lakes…it was kind of like a boardwalk area with music and lots of outdoor dining and drinking.  All of the bars and buildings were lit up in neon lights, so the area was well lit and the reflections in the lakes were beautiful. 

 

Getting back to the hotel…Once again, we had to pull out a sheet of paper with our guesthouse name written on it and show it to the taxi driver.  That is as far as our communication went.  Cabs here are very cheap…for a 30 minute ride it cost us about 45 Yuan…about $6.  When we got back to the hotel, Kris and I just hung out in our room for a while and talked before we went to sleep.

 

April 5, 2008…Pearl Market: Day 1

0630 wake-up call for our Taji practice (Tai Chi…Chinese Shadow Boxing) in the garden area of our guest house.  Our SAS group attempted to learn Taji, but I don’t think we were very good at it.  Our instructor didn’t speak a word of English, so he would instruct us in Mandarin and then we had a translator translating what he said.  Lets just say I wasn’t very coordinated and couldn’t really do the moves very well.  I don’t think he was too impressed!

 

After Taji, we went back into the guesthouse for breakfast.  I had this doughy kind of bread thing for breakfast that didn’t really have much taste, it was kind of weird.  After breakfast we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  Tiananmen Square is where a communist protest took place years ago & where Mao Zedong’s portrait hangs on his mausoleum.  As I walked around both places, people kept coming up to me asking if they could take a picture with me.  I got the whole picture taking thing more than a lot of my friends because of my blonde hair.  I would have to say that it gets kind of annoying after a while.  We are on a time limit at every place we visit, and people kept stopping me along the way asking to take a picture with me.  An interesting fact about all the pictures I took with the Chinese…they all hold up their fingers in a peace sign…in every picture.  They do this in a lot of the countries we have visited so far.  I think it is hilarious, so I join in with them and hold up a peace sign as well.

 

As we walked around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, we saw tons of little kids.  Little kids in China…not the same as in America.  These kids don’t wear diapers, rather they just don’t wear underwear and have a slit in the back of their pants where their butt-hole is.  This way when then have to go to the bathroom, they just squat and go.  I got the opportunity to see one of the little kids (who wasn’t really so little, maybe 8 or 9) squatting in the middle of the Forbidden City, taking a dump…his mom was catching it in a zip-lock baggie, how cute!  Got that one on camera!  Anyways, we saw tons of little kids walking around with their butt cheeks hanging out, it is the funniest/cutest thing I have ever seen!

 

After a few hours of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, we went out to a restaurant for another Dim Sum lunch. The food was all pre-ordered by SAS and the restaurant just loaded it onto the lazy susan   For the most part, I didn’t know what the dumplings were filled with, but we got this chicken dish that was amazing!  As I sat and ate my lunch, I noticed some of the waiters and waitresses taking pictures of me.  They were trying to hide behind this little wall that was near our table, but I caught them…once again, the whole blonde hair thing amazes them.  Once I caught them, they decided to get in the pictures with me and of course, hold up a peace sign.  One of the waiters was hilarious and took a ton of pictures with me.  I felt like a celebrity!

 

Next on our itinerary was the Temple of Heaven.  The Temple of Heaven was the place where the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties would worship heaven.  We have been to so many temples at this point, that many of us are starting to get “templed out.”  I enjoy walking around the temples, looking at all the different architecture and landscaping, etc., but I don’t know how many more temples I can go to.  While walking around the Temple of Heaven, I spotted a few little kids playing with bubbles, so I joined in.   I kinda forgot how much fun blowing bubbles could be.

 

After seeing the 1,000,000^th temple of this trip, we made our way to the Chinese Acrobatic Show.  First off, all of the costumes and outfits were really cool looking.  Then, the actual show was amazing.  I have never seen women’s bodies bend in ways that these women’s bodies bent in.  People were doing flips like you have never seen before.  Men were holding each other up by just one hand, or balancing another guy on just their head….it was incredible.  The show kept everyone at the edge of their seats wanting more.  For one of the acts, there were at least 11 people balancing and riding on one regular bicycle at the same time!

 

After the Chinese Acrobatic show, the buses dropped us off at the Silk Street Pearl Market.  The Pearl Market had anything and everything….for soo cheap!!!  We only had an hour and a half to shop around before the Silk Market closed…not nearly enough time. It was enough time however for Kristin and I to do some serious damage.  The hecklers (vendors) were insane. They were mostly female and would start you at a price that was seriously at least 10x higher than what you would end up paying.  I feel bad for anyone that doesn’t know how to bargain at this point in the trip because they could have ripped you off pretty badly.  I am a pro by now!  We will have to come back tomorrow, or maybe even 2 more times on this trip.  After the Pearl Market closed, Kristin and I grabbed a quick bite to eat at a nearby Pizza Restaurant (Sarpino’s), where we bumped into other SAS kids and some fellow New Yorkers! 

 

We didn’t go out tonight because we were advised to get a good night sleep the night before climbing the Great Wall of China…

 

 

April 6, 2008- The Great Wall of China…more like the Great Staircase of China

Another early wake up…0745 breakfast…0815 on the road to the Great Wall of China.  The weather wasn’t the best day to climb the Great Wall, but we had no choice.  It was kind of foggy outside, so we couldn’t fully see how long/far the Great Wall ran. Just for you all to get a grasp on how big this wall really is, it covers about the same distance as the distance between California and the east coast!  Anyways, our bus pulled up to the Great Wall of China…the Great Wall of China…who would of ever thought that I would get to climb it.  We had 2 hours to climb to the top and back down.

 

2 hours seemed like a long time at first.  Keyword = at first.  I never knew that the steps of the Great Wall of China were so STEEP.  As I took my first few steps onto the Great Wall I knew I was in for a workout. The stairs were so uneven…some were over a foot tall and others were hardly big enough to put your foot on.  Lets just say that Kristin and I were a bit short of breath after a few steps, and took a few occasional breaks here and there. I felt like an old person when I had to stop every thirty steps or so on the way up! It was SO HARD.  2 hours didn’t seem so long anymore… After a good hour and fifteen minutes, I made it to the top.  Even with the fog, it was such an amazing view and feeling.  Here I was, standing on top of the Great Wall of China.  A few times during my climb I got stopped to take pictures with local Chinese people; this time I didn’t really mind or oppose as it gave me a reason to stop and catch my breath.  Most of my climbing experience was with Kristin, Katie, Andy, Adam, Alyssa, and Caroline.  As we made our way down the Great Wall of China, my legs could not stop shaking, they were so tired and had just gone through a very vigorous workout! Haha.  It was very crowded trying to climb down the Great Wall because so many people were trying to climb up it.  I am so happy we got there early enough to avoid the big crowd going up.  I would have to say that climbing down the Great Wall was no piece of cake.  Needless to say, we all made it back down in 2 hours time.  Now I can say that I have climbed the Great Wall of China!

 

The name of the trip I signed up for was Beijing: Tsinghua University.  On this trip we were supposed to meet and interact with the students of Tsinghua University…everyday.  We have yet to meet the students so far, and we leave to go to Shanghai tomorrow.  We were all kind of annoyed that we hadn’t gotten to interact with the students yet as they were supposed to meet us at the airport and take us around to all of the touristy spots.  This is one of the main reasons that I had signed up for this trip.  The next thing on our itinerary read “Campus Tour and game with Tsinghua students.”  So we went to go meet up with the students….no tour and no games.  We sat in a lecture hall and listened to all of 3 students lecture to us about a Chinese musical instrument, Chinese opera, and some other stuff. At this point, we were really pissed because when you’re in a city like Beijing for only three days, the last thing you want to do is see a student presentation on opera.  This was all stuff that we could have learnt in a textbook.  We all felt bad about not being enthusiastic about the student’s presentation, but in the back of all our minds, we wanted to be other places.  Eventually, there was a good time to sneak out the back when one student called us up to look at his Chinese calligraphy (no thanks!).  I took that opportunity to grab Kristin, walk out the door, drop our stuff off in the guesthouse and make our way to the Pearl Market.  We wound up bumping into Charlotte, Caroline, Alyssa, and Sarah back at the guesthouse, who also peaced out of the lecture.  They had the same plan in mind, so we all decided to go together.  Before going to the Pearl Market, we decided to make a pit stop at the Beijing Olympic Stadium.  For those of you who don’t know, the Olympics are being held in Beijing this upcoming summer.  Although our cab drivers understood where we wanted to go, we didn’t have much luck.  We were only allowed so close to the stadium, and we couldn’t go inside it.  But, we did get the chance to see it.  We saw the building that the water sports will soon take place in; it is a really cool looking building and is beautiful at night! 

 

After looking at the Olympic Stadium we took a cab to the Pearl Market.  This time we didn’t have a sheet of paper that said Pearl Market in Mandarin, but our driver somehow understood where we wanted to go…we were lucky.  So we got to the pearl Market, which is HUGE…7 floors….and Kristin and I decided to split up from the rest of the group to try and get some serious shopping done.  In order to do some shopping, you need some money.  So we walked over to the ATM, and of course my card was declined!  So, Kristin told me that I could just borrow some money from her….but, she left her card in the guest house.  It would be impossible for us to even attempt to try and find the other girls to see if we could borrow some money from them, so we had to get a cab all the way back to our guest house (which was 45 minutes away).  I had the business card of our guest house, so we had no trouble getting back there; Kristin ran in, got her card, and I waited in the cab hoping that he would take us back to where we just came from.  When we were ready to make our way back to the Pearl Market, our driver didn’t understand that we wanted to go back to where we just came from.  We tried talking to the people at the reception desk of the guesthouse to write out Pearl Market, but they didn’t understand.  We tried asking them, as well as locals on the street, if they knew what the Pearl Market was or if they knew how to say, go back to where you picked us up from…no luck.  We must have asked around for about an hour before we found a man who was able to understand us and told our driver to take us back to where we came from….the language barrier is very frustrating.  We got back to the Pearl Market at about 1945 and had a little over an hour to shop, when we originally planned on having 3.  You know what that means….we’ll just have to come back tomorrow!!!  We stayed until the Pearl Market was closing and then went back to Sarpino’s Restaurant for dinner.

 

What a day…

 

 

April 7, 2008…last day in Beijing                       

Since yesterday wasn’t so successful at the Pearl Market, Kristin and I, along with Charlotte and Sarah felt the need to go back there for the morning.  The trip we were on with SAS had scheduled a trip to the zoo to see giant panda’s, but we all agreed that we could always go to the zoo back home and see panda’s…we can’t always go to shop at the Pearl Market. 

 

We woke up for our 0745 breakfast with our SAS group and spoke to our trip leaders, Carl and Noah about our plans for the day.  Straying away from the group is always a little risky, especially on the last day when you have to catch a flight.  It is even more risky in China where most people, especially most of the cab drivers don’t speak any English.  Today was going to be an adventure…Luckily we had our tour guide (who spoke English) to write out different words in Chinese for us to show to our cab drivers.  We had her write out Pearl Market, North Gate of Summer Palace, and Beijing Airport Terminal 3.  Just in case we missed or couldn’t find our SAS group at the Summer Palace, we had the area of the airport written out to show to a cab driver to hopefully meet up with our group.  Kristin and I threw our backpacks on the bus with our SAS group, and took a taxi to the Pearl Market for another day of shopping and bargaining.  All I can say is that when I left the Pearl market, I was exhausted.  Shopping and bargaining ain’t easy!  How the bargaining worked in the Pearl Market… at first they tell you they are giving you the best price and “only for you…don’t tell anyone.”  A minute later, you have them down to 1/5th that price after pretending to walk away and lying that you already found it for cheaper. A lot of the ladies will go as far as following you down an aisle and grabbing onto your arm yelling “beautiful lady, how much do you want this for?”  I almost got into a rumble with some lady when she wouldn’t let go of my freakin’ arm!

 

Kristin and I left the market around 1200 to try and find our group at the Summer Palace.  We felt that waiting to meet them at the airport was too risky, especially since we don’t hold onto our plane tickets, our group leaders do.  With the way our taxi rides have been going so far, we figured we would try to meet them at the Summer Palace first and if that didn’t work then we would resort to the airport.  So we hail a cab…and what do you know, our driver speaks English!  I couldn’t have asked for anything more.  I got in the taxi and showed him the sheet of paper with Summer Palace written on it in Chinese and he replied, “you want to go to the north gate of Summer Palace?  No problem.”  I was so happy!  After a 45-minute drive to the Summer Palace, we found our group, walked around the Summer Palace for a little while and then ate lunch at a nearby restaurant.  Well…I can’t exactly say that I ate lunch at the restaurant.  Some of the food I tried was nasty, and other foods I judged based on other peoples reactions…soooo I politely excused myself from the table with Alyssa and Charlotte and went next door for some quality McDonald’s…quarter pounders with cheese and French fries!  Delicious!

 

When we got back on the buses after lunch, our tour guide told us that we had some extra time before we had to go to the airport and that she had arranged for the bus driver to take us back to the Pearl market.  Just what I needed, right?!  So, there I am, looking at my backpack overflowing with stuff from the Pearl market, and this lady is telling me that we are going back there.  No need to say anymore….you know I went back in and shopped!  I had 1 hour to run around the Pearl Market and do some serious damage…all in all, I think I bought enough to own a significant portion of China.  I LOVE THE PEARL MARKET!

 

We left the Pearl Market around 1630 to head to the airport for our flight to Shanghai, where our ship was meeting us to leave the next night.  Sad to say, this was my last flight for a semester at sea trip!  All of the trips to Beijing were coming in around the same time, so it was a race back to the ship between all of the buses.  There were 400 kids getting back all around the same time.  Our bus left first and was in the lead the whole time.  So, we arrive to the ship and our driver decides to circle around the parking lot in order to let us off right in front of the stairs to get onto the ship.  Lets just say it was the longest 30 seconds of my life!  We were all screaming at him to stop, but I guess the language barrier got in the way.  In the 30 seconds that our driver was circling around the parking lot, another bus pulled in behind us and all the kids on that bus got off and got on line to get on the ship!  UGH!!!  We were in the lead the whole time…very frustrating.  Basically everyone has to line up one by one to get back on the ship.  We all have to get our bags thoroughly searched for alcohol and other prohibited items.  It takes forever as there are only 2 people that check through the bags and there were 400 students trying to get on the ship at one time.  Anyways, we weren’t too far back in the line, so it took us about 30 minutes…it should of taken us no more than 5 minutes if our bus driver didn’t circle around the stinking parking lot! 

 

We were all so tired, but we knew that we had to experience the nightlife in Shanghai!  So we had a 15-minute turnaround to put our stuff on the ship, change and fix ourselves up to leave to go out for the night in Shanghai.  I went out to a bar street (that our tour guide recommended and wrote out in Chinese) with Kristin, Sarah, Whitney, and Tessa.    The driver just dropped us off on this street that was filled with tons of bars and we just picked one that looked pretty happening to go in.  The bar we hung out at was called Zapatas.  There happened to be a good amount of kids from SAS there, as well as American kids who were studying abroad in Shanghai.  There were also tons of people from China…we are in China after all!!!   We stayed out until about 0245 and hit up McDonalds on the way back to the ship!  McDonald’s is saving my life in China!

 

 

April 8, 2008...last day in China- Shanghai

If I had to describe today in a few words….Random and a lot fun!  I got off the ship around 1000 with Krisitn, Katie, Caroline, and Alyssa.  I got to know Caroline and Alyssa a lot better on my Beijing trip, and I really like hanging out with them.  Anyways it was a little rainy and cold in Shanghai today.  We first took a taxi to Pu Dong, home of the tall Pearl Tower, which is a skyscraper that has 3 balls going up it.  It is a really cool looking building, but it was very overcast/polluted, so we couldn’t even see the third ball! 

 

It was too cold outside to just aimlessly walk around, so we went into a nearby mall to try and figure out what to do for the day.  Earlier in the day, Qi wrote out on a piece of paper 2 markets that we should go to in Shanghai…so we decided to get in a cab and ask the driver to take us to one of them.  We got to the “market,” but the market was a temple….way to go Qi!  We tried asking around to find the market, but everyone we showed the piece of paper to, pointed to the temple; Qi wrote the wrong thing down.  We figured that the market was nearby and tried asking locals where it was….not so easy to do because of the language barrier.  Luckily Alyssa was carrying around her lonely planet, found the market on a map, and asked a local to point us in the right direction.  We all got a few pirated DVDs and a few other things here and there.  Our main goal was to get a lot of DVD’s, but we couldn’t find too many at this market.  Moving on…

 

After the market, we went to an area called the Bunt; the Bunt was the river area….we looked at the scenery and skyline for a little bit, but it was still cold outside and we were still on a mission to get DVD’s.  We shadily asked street people if they had any, and we got 3 people to take us to some shady areas for DVD’s….5 yuan each.  These shady places kind of reminded me of Canal Street in NYC when they take you into a back room for handbags and what not…but maybe like 5X shadier.  One of the places that we went to look for some DVD’s was through an alley way, up a bunch of rickety staircases and into a padlocked room….this place was REALLY sketchy, so we got the heck out of there really fast.  Another place we went to was also located in a really sketchy area, and we were locked into a room with a group of people, but they had a really good selection of DVD’s, so we decided to stay and look through them!

 

After DVD shopping, we all went out to lunch at a restaurant that we saw had an English menu.  That is one of the criteria we look for when picking a restaurant.  As usual, I don’t like many foods (and neither does Caroline), so we each decided to order french fries, caesar salad, and apple juice.

 

The french fries were good and they had heinz ketchup, so I was pretty happy with that.  The caesar salad on the other hand was not caesar salad, it had some weird pink dressing, not much lettuce and lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, bacon, and croutons.  Also, you usually get your drink before/ with your meal…not us.  We kept attempting to ask our waitress (who spoke ZERO English) for our drink, but it was impossible to get our waitress to bring us our juice.  We finally got it at the end of our meal and it was some ground up apple concoction that tasted awful…not what we expected.  It looked really nice, but was kind of thick and gritty...I just wanted Motts or something like that.

 

Once again, we all piled into a taxi to take us back to the ship.  I had plans to meet Qi for dinner with his family and a few other kids on the ship.  I have been looking forward to dinner with Qi and his family for a while!

 

Let me explain all of our cab rides today in Shanghai...the drivers are very strict about 4 people to a cab, being that it is a communist country.  We didn't want to split the 5 of us up into 2 cabs because it would have been impossible to find one another if the cabs got separated; we have no way of communicating with the driver and we have no idea if we are being taken to the right place.  So we decided to squish all 5 of us in 1 cab...without the driver knowing.  The game plan...one person would get in the front and distract the driver by showing him a sheet of paper with where we wanted to go...while that was happening, 3 people piled into the back and one person dove across all three laps so the driver couldn't see them and we got the 5 of us in each taxi...we got caught once but other than that we were fine!

 

1600- Zach, Andy, Adam, Jake, Amy and I went out to dinner with Qi and his parents, who do not speak any English.  Qi ordered the food for the table as the menu was in Mandarin.  I was kind of nervous as he ordered chickens fingers the last time I went out to eat with him, but we didn’t really have a choice.  Since I got the seat next to Qi, he put everything on my plate that was brought to the table.  There were at least 15 different dishes, and I didn’t really like any of them, but I had to try them all...with chopsticks.  What a mess!  Qi's family also likes, no, LOVES, to drink...we were each given a huge bottle of beer (probably had 4 beers to each bottle) and a half glass of some Chinese liquor that Qi told us you do not mix with any soda or anything...it was the strongest liquor I have ever had/smelt/tasted.  Qi's dad kept saying “ Morgan, GOMBAY”…which means “Morgan, Cheers,” and I would have to raise my glass to his and drink whatever was in my glass and then refill it...OY!  For some reason he kept just cheersing me, I have no idea why.  Qi's family was lovely to go out to eat with and I am happy I got the opportunity to do so.  They paid for dinner, which was very nice of them, and Qi and Jake acted as the translators for our dinner.  It was a fun/different way to experience dinner out in China.  Let’s say that Chinese food in China is definitely not the same as it is back in the states...I want some chicken and broccoli, white rice, egg rolls, and lo mien!

 

3 big cities in 6 days….I am exhausted…2 days until I get to Japan….