China Part I

As most of you know, this trip to China came about pretty haphazardly.  My friend, Leslie found a Groupon for a guided tour which included flights, hotels, and meals so I really didn’t have to put much thought into the trip.  In fact, I may have slacked off just a little too much in my planning.  I knew I needed to obtain a visa before entering China, but how to get one wasn’t exactly clear.  It felt really sketchy to send my passport off in the mail, so I admit I waited until the last minute.  Oooops!  All of a sudden it was Wednesday and I was supposed to fly out on Monday morning and I still hadn’t received my passport back.  Yikes! I called the visa processing agency and they send they’d be sending it Friday for delivery on Saturday, so “don’t leave your house on Saturday”.

Saturday morning I woke up early typed in the tracking number for my package online and prepared to wait.  From my apartment I can hear trucks driving by on the street, so every time I heard a truck I went to the window and looked down to see if it was FedEx.  I also refreshed the FedEx tracking page every ten minutes just to be sure.  After 3 hours of doing this I hit refresh one more time and what did I see??  “Delivery failed, customer not home.  Package delivery rescheduled for Monday.”  I swear steam must’ve come out of my ears I was SO furious!!!  I had been home all morning waiting!  I called FedEx fuming mad, on the verge of tears and explained that if I didn’t get that package today I couldn’t board the plane Monday morning.  They offered no explanation as to why the driver didn’t even attempt to deliver the package, but they did say I could pick it up at the depo (on the opposite side of town) in a few hours.  So finally at 2:00pm on Saturday I had my passport/visa and was ready to go, well, except for the packing part….

Now, with all the technicalities out of the way I was free to begin my trip.  Oh wait, what about my flight?  Maybe I should double check the info I was given?  Turns out the flight info the tour company sent me was an hour off.  My real flight was an hour earlier, so if I hadn’t checked I would’ve missed it.  The flight was pretty crummy, Seattle to San Francisco to Beijing to Shanghai and Leslie and I weren’t even on the same flights for the first leg.  I’m pretty sure we could’ve gotten a much more direct flight, but I guess that’s why the Groupon was such a good deal.  After 30 hours of flights, layovers, and delays we finally arrived in Shanghai, China.

Stephanie (Leslie's friend from Cali), Leslie, and Me.  I don't think we look too bad
considering we'd been travelling for 30 hours straight

Thankfully, despite our delays we were greeted by our tour guide “Wilson” at the airport.  (Obviously that was not his given name; instead he chose it based on the movie Castaway.)  We didn’t arrive at our hotel until after midnight so all we could manage was showers and bedtime.  The next day we had an early morning wake-up call to begin our adventures.  The tour group included 39 people, all from the US or Canada with a mix of couples, singles, groups of friends, and family members.  The age range was from 26 to about 70, but I’d guess the median was 50.  We all piled into a giant tour bus and head to the Bund, our first stop.

The rest of the day was go, go, go and set the pace for the rest of the trip.

A visit to the 9th tallest building in the world (Jin Mao Tower)

A visit to the Shanghai museum.  Evidently in China its okay to take photos inside museums and I also noticed a lot of people going up and touching the artwork and exhibits, so I guess that's how they roll.

Next, a stop at a local shopping district

Then, Cheng Huang Miao (City God Temple)

To top off that full, crazy day, what more could a girl ask for than meat with sprinkles?  Did you think you misread that last part?  Nope, you didn't.  That's right, they served us meat with frosting and ice cream sprinkles (aka jimmies) on it.  When it first came out to the table we figured it must be dessert, until the first person tried it.  It was definitely some sort of meat, but throughout the trip we could rarely identify what kind of meat we were being served, so it's anyone's guess.  I figure Chinese people must think that all stupid Americans like sprinkles on stuff.  (This was not the last time we were served sprinkle meat.)

Sorry for the crap photography

Wow, that was just the first day of my trip!  We saw and did so many awesome, exciting, crazy things so I'll do my best to document the rest of the trip very soon.