4/1 - 4/2: Shanghai, China

Day 1: Woke up early and waited around for Chinese immigration to clear the ship. I did a SaS trip to a local kindergarten and spent the entire 2 hours being entertained by the cutest little kids ever; we also stopped at a community center and had green tea while we learned a little about how each community runs. We went back to the ship for lunch and I spent the afternoon doing art homework and watching Grey’s Anatomy. Then I got dressed and went down to help out with the formal open ship Semester at Sea had for all the Chinese dignitaries who donate money to the program; I gave a few ship tours and enjoyed a fancy dinner and ceremony that took most of the night. I didn’t feel like going out so I stayed in and watched some more Grey’s Anatomy.

Day 2: Woke up early and went to breakfast. Then Shelly, Cara, Graham and I went out to explore Shanghai. After finding a bank and realizing the market that we wanted to go to was far, we took a taxi to the street where most of the activity in the city is. We walked around and found the market mall; I bought a pair of red fake Converses and a cool painting. Then we had lunch at McDonalds because my friends wanted American food. After lunch we had a taxi take us to the Bund which is an underground tunnel that connects the new and old city but you had to pay and couldn’t just walk across so we decided not to. Instead we walked outside and found a sweet underground market with loads of souvenirs and nifty things. Spent an hour or so there and headed back to the ship.

Things I’ve learned:
*Language barriers suck; maps with Chinese characters and English written on them are lifesavers.
*Hong Kong really is nothing like China; no one here speaks English but almost everyone in HK did. And the people in Honk Kong were much nicer to us.
*China really does have a problem with air pollution; you can’t even tell the sun has risen because the smog is so thick on some days.
*Shanghai is a 2-hour drive from tip to tip; it’s a huge city broken up into new and old halves.
*The buildings in new Shanghai are really cool; I got some great pictures of the night skyline.
*When you and the taxi driver don’t speak the same language, you can both end up really confused; at one point we had to ask 3 different drivers to take us to one spot (which I pointed to on the map) and even then they took us to the wrong place.

Now we’re almost to Japan. We make 2 ports for 2 days each with 1 day in between; Kobe and Yokohama. My friends and I are trying to get tattoos while there and I have a trip to Mt. Fuji on the last day so I’m really, really excited. I think I’m down to 32 days or so left until I’m back in Maine so I’m getting really anxious for that too. Hopefully the rest of the trip goes by as good and quickly. Love and miss you all.