Ni Hao from Shanghai!

Ni Hao!
I’m in China!  The most populated country in the world and it shows!  We got to Shanghai yesterday and I am leaving tomorrow afternoon for Beijing to see the Great Wall and what not.  We’re also here for Chinese new years which is pretty exciting. 
Yesterday, me and Jamie just wandered around The Bund which is a street on the banks of the river with a bunch of shops and what not.  It was insane!  China so far is insane actually.  There are soooooo many people!  And unlike Japan, they shove you and cut you in line.  It’s a little ridiculous, not gonna lie.  So anyway, we walked around and went into a couple shops before going to this place to eat where we ate SOOOO much food for sooooo cheap!  Altogether we got, minestrone soup, cappuccino potato soup  (soooo goooood), fried calamari, rainforest fruit pizza, buffalo wings, buffalo wing pizza, and fried cream potatoes (keep in mind these pizzas are personal sized pizzas and each other thing came with like, 4 things each).  It was great though!  After that, we shopped around a mall and then went on the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel.  We figured we would take the tunnel under the river so we could go to the Jin Mao Observatory. The tunnel was interesting.  It was like this little car you get in and you go through this tunnel and there are flashing lights and it was kinda trippy.  We got out of the tunnel and walked towards the Jin Mao tower, only to find out that there was another river that had to be crossed!  And we didn’t know how to do that!  Hahah it was so funny.  We were so confused because we thought by taking the tunnel we would be going under the river but I don’t know what happened there.  After that little fiasco, we took the tunnel again and just went back to the ship because it was about 6ish maybe, and we wanted to get ready to go out.  We went out and it was tough with the language barrier and cab drivers but we had fun.

Today, me and Jamie went to the Science and Technology Museum and it was so cool!!  The first room we went into had all these stuffed animals in them in like their natural landscapes and everything.  Then we went into this rainforest room.  After that we went up to the World of Robots and the science room.  Then we went into the health and fitness room where like you could do all these tests and physical activity to see how fit you were and what not but we didn’t do that because it would take an hour to do plus there was a half hour-ish wait.  After that room we went to the space room and looked through that.  It was really cool and I’m glad we went.  After that, we FINALLY made it to Jin Mao Tower to go to the observatory deck.  We were determined to go because we tried so hard to go yesterday that we just HAD to go.  So we went, and you take an elevator to the 88th floor, which is the observatory, and it only takes 45 seconds to get there!  It was so cool because you could just see on and on for miles and miles and miles.  And we could see our ship!  We stayed up there for awhile before coming back down and we couldn’t decide if we wanted to go to some gardens or not and we decided not to.  Good thing we didn’t!  When we got back to the boat, I ran into my friends who told me they were at the gardens and got separated from their one friend because it was PACKED there because of Chinese New Year festivities and they searched for her for 2 hours and came back to the boat to file a missing persons report!  But luckily, Alison made it back and she is fine!  She wandered around the gardens for 2 hours also, looking for them, and then found other Semester at Sea-ers (or SASers) and hung out with them.  Now I am back on the boat and I have to pack for Beijing which I am DREADING because it is going to be FREEZING and I absolutely hate the cold!!!  Well, I’ll catch ya on the flip side, aka Hong Kong!!