Not enough time in between ports! I just arrived in Vietnam, but I will try to finish the rest of the China blog in the next few days! Here is the first half of my time in China!

Day 1:
I woke up to a beautiful view of the Shanghai skyline. One of the largest towers in Shanghai was about a hundred yards across the water from my window! Later in the afternoon I went on a tour of the Zuijiajo Water Village. It is still an active village so people live and work along the water and we got to see it first hand on a boat ride down the central canal. Here is where I had my first encounter with the Chinese smells- never again do I want to smell fried fermented tofu! Later in the evening we went to the 87th floor of the Jin Mao building where we had a fantastic view of Shanghai at night. Almost every building has some sort of colorful lights so the night view is beautiful!

Day 2:
Becca, Cara, and I spent all day shopping. This was just one of our adventures….
A man came up to us on the street and said handbags? Come with me. We followed him for close to a mile down a main road, then down a back alley and into a basement where we were locked in a room with him, a sales lady, and a load of knock off purses, watches, sunglasses, Northface jackets, etc. Then we left there and he took us to another basement in a back alley and then a hole in the wall down, yet again, another alley. But we still didn’t find exactly what we wanted. So we proceeded to get in a taxi with him and take about a 10 min ride to a warehouse. We followed him up some stairs and into a bazaar where we were then shown more handbags in several booths. Not that we weren’t already nervous about what was happening, but when he and another man locked us three girls in an 8x8 room we decided it was time to loose our "personal shopping tour guide." We tried to explain we were done but he didn’t understand English. We paid him so that he would get the hint. But I don’t think we paid him enough according to his standards because he started to yell at us, but finally he left and we managed to hide from him in the bazaar for awhile. We decided to get out of there and took a taxi back to where we began. It was fun and stupid, but we got some handbags out of it and a good story!haha Afterwards, we were kinda freaking out about what we had just experienced, so we found our safeplace- starbucks- sat down and took a minute to think about what had just happened. We laughed and thanked the good Lord we were still alive!
Later that night we met up with my roommate Victoria, who has a place in Shanghai, and the rest of our traveling crew. We enjoyed some local dumplings and then headed to Vic’s place to shoot off fireworks for the Chinese New Year. Her parents bought us a load of fireworks and we had a blast shooting them off. Fireworks were going off all over the city at the eleventh hour to welcome in the god of wealth for the New Year.

Day 3:
We left for Beijing at 530 a.m.! Later in the afternoon we visited the Temple of Heaven. Although the temple was very interesting, I think what I found most interesting was the park outside the temple. The park was full of Chinese retirees playing games and performing music.  In this part of China you retire at an early age, around 50, so to fill their time they come out to the park and hang out. I got to play shuttle cock with several of them and they were so good! It was a game kind of like hacky sack.  Next, we went to a tea ceremony! Later we took a rickshaw ride along the river to a local family’s house for dinner. It was great to see how the people actually live. They had one big room that doubled as the dining and living room and then one small bedroom and a tiny kitchen. In China it is customary for the grandparents to live with their children so this house was home to 5 or 6 people. Exhausted from the long day, we finally arrived back at the hotel and finished the evening off with Hagen-Daaz. But this ice cream shop was not like the ones in America. When we walked in we were seated at a table and we had a waiter and menus. It was awesome! It was like an ice cream restaurant!!

Day 4:
We started the day in Tiananmen Square. It was so much bigger than I had imagined. We had to go through a security check to enter the square, but it was strange because we did not have to have our bags checked or even go through the metal detector, but every local did. It was really interesting there too because so many Chinese people wanted their picture with us. It took us forever to make it through the square because we had to stop so many times! Then we went to the Forbidden City or Imperial Palace. Every time we passed through a gate I thought we were almost there, but this place went on for forever! It took over 3 hours just to walk straight from the south end to the north end. There are so many rooms that if you visited each one for 10 minutes it would take over 24 years! Everything was so ornate and fancy. You might recognize it from the Disney movie Mulan! Next, we went to a special needs orphanage in the rural region of Beijing. We were able to spend an hour there cleaning and interacting with the children. It was very sad to see the condition these kids lived in, but if this orphanage had not been started many of these children would be on the streets homeless. Having a special need in this part of the country makes you an outcast; so at least this was a place where the children would have someone to love them and a roof over their heads. We were able to bring them several computers and they were so excited! I’m really glad I was able to experience this part of Beijing as well.  We finished the evening off with a roasted duck dinner and more food then any human should consume!