Well its been about 3 months since I was in China during Semester at Sea, and I'm finally sitting down to blog about it. I left off with Hong Kong, which I blogged about in May, shortly after disembarking the MV Explorer. Kyle, Katie and I arrived in Beijing (flying from Hong Kong) after a lovely flight, consisting of a meal and a large variety of free movies. I was so tired, but forced myself to stay awake because I hadn't seen a new movie in months at this point-I had to enjoy this luxury. :) We got to the airport and instantly learned that Beijing has a LOT less English than in Hong Kong. Like hardly any. We met this nice woman whos from America, but has lived in China for 15 years, teaching English. She brought us to the metro, and rode with us, helping us and telling us a bunch of useful information. We got off the metro, found a hostel, went back on the metro and headed to the famous Forbidden City and Tianammen Square. A pretty awesome godwink happened there..I was missing certain friends and certain qualities of friends..positivity mostly, when I ran into 2 really great friends, who were 2 of the most positive, friendly, wonderful friends on the ship. It was pretty crazy that we ran into them of all people in the middle of thousands of people at the Forbidden City. We all had dinner together and enjoyed very unique foods. I ate duck. No one at the restaurant spoke English-including all of the waitstaff. After we ate we shopped around at vendors on the street and enjoyed (or was annoyed) at the art and game of bargaining!
The next day we went to the Great Wall! We decided to be adventurous and instead of taking the easy way out and book a tour with a group, we took a metro, and found a bus that brought us to the Great Wall. It took us quite some time to find the bus we were supposed to take, asking countless people from China where to find the bus, and consistently getting the same confused look and shrug because no one knew English. We walked here, there and everywhere, and finally stumbled upon the right busstop, confirming with European travelers waiting on the sidewalk for the bus. We piled onto a crammed bus and were on our way to THE Great Wall of China! The bus was SO quiet...no one spoke. No one! Even though every seat was taken and people were even standing in the aisle. We learned that the quietness has to do with their culture. It is in their culture to not really stand out, but to blend into society (similar to communism) and so there explains the quietness and uniformity on the bus. Quite the opposite from America eh?
The Great wall was magnificent. So amazing to see in real life. It goes on and on forever. We visited just a small section of it. It was a BEAUTIFUL day. We were blessed. The skies were completely blue and it was even warm-unusual for that time of year in Beijing. We rode a roller coaster like ride up part of the wall and walked to the top of the section we were at. It was PACKED on the wall...so many people! A bunch of people from China asked to take pictures with us-so cute! As we were leaving we ran into Mica and her friends-who we ran into the previous day! Such a great godwink, because I was craving her positivity and her essence and there she was-once again! They were the only Semester at Sea kids we ran into on the wall too!
On the bus ride back we had to stand in the aisle. We were tired, so we decided to sit in the aisle and lean back on each other-haha it was quite a sight-talk about sticking out. When we got back we headed to an acrobatic show. It was so cool!!! The theater was beautiful and the acrobats were amazing! Motorcycles were driving around in a ball like thing-unbelievable! Afterwards we decided to go out, and found this cool lake with bars and restaurants surrounding it. We found some SAS friends, and then headed to a club where many SAS kids were. We had a fun night, dancing the night away. The night ended with one of manyyy McDonalds stops (conveniently located right next to our hostel).
The next day we went to the Pearl Market. This market is well known and consists of floors upon floors of vendor after vendor-selling the same things, and competing like crazy. Bargain, bargain, bargain, until you never want to bargain again in your life. It pays off though-ipod speakers for $5, a maxi dress for $6, a ukele for $20 and a cashmere sweater for $7. The lady that sold me the cashmere sweater escorted me down 3 floors to an ATM because I said I would buy it but didn't have cash (to ensure I would buy from her since the competition is so intense). After we were all shopped out we headed to the Temple of Heaven. This Temple was absolutely beautiful. There I came across a few people from China singing classical music. I was mesmorized-I hear classical music and classically trained singers on a daily basis at school-and I hadn't heard it for months at this point. It felt like a taste of home hearing their voices.
That night we took an overnight train to Shanghai. Before the train left, we stopped at Pizza Hut, where I ordered seafood pizza which included octopus legs! To save money we didn't get a compartment with beds, but instead slept in upright seats for the 10 hour ride. I lucked out-the seat next to me was empty, so I was able to lay down and curl up in a ball, sleeping for most of the way. When we reached Shanghai we followed Kyle's roommate to the subway, where we tried to navigate our way home using the maps and signs in nothing but Chinese. We ended up losing Kyle's roommate, which turned out to be a very bad thing because we didn't have a green sheet with us. A green sheet is a very important sheet that we were urged to bring with us at all times in every country. It had all the information we needed such as ship and professor's phone numbers, address of the ship's location, and on ship times. Since the ship went from Hong Kong to Shanghai without us, we had no clue where the ship was. We didn't think it would be too hard at first-find water, a dock..the ship had to be there right? Ohhh not so easy it turns out. We asked many people, through hand motions, drawings, showing pictures on our phone if we found wifi..showing pictures of our ship, we took a few different taxis, all bringing us to different places. It was insane. No one spoke English, and no one had a CLUE what we were talking about..the port is also huge/theres a bunch of different ones..the city is surrounded by water..so uh yeah. I had an idea when we went to Starbucks a couple hours into our search, in the midst of ridiculous frustration and exhaustion by Katie and Kyle who got no sleep. I went on the SAS website and found addresses for each port-I remember seeing that before. I then pointed to it to the barista, who found a guy who spoke some English, who looked on his computer and was able to write down the address in Chinese so we could hand it to a cab driver. Feeling relieved and that we were finally on our way "home" after hours of frustration we climbed into the cab. The cab dropped us off at not the dock where the ship is but the post office where parents can send us mail-thats what the addresses on the website were for. WHOOPS! At this point we are beyond frustrated, completely out of ideas. Feeling pretty hopeless. A while before that I prayed that we would run into a Semester at Sea kid, since theyd be able to tell us how to get back to the ship. We got out of the cab, and sat on a stoop. Kyle's nose starts bleeding badly, and Katie starts walking off without us realizing (looking for the ship). I'm sitting there thinking, What are we gonna do. I am literally out of ideas and am completely clueless as to how we are going to find the ship. At that instant I happen to turn my head, and who is standing there completely still with a shocked look on his face? My really good friend Nate, and behind him my good friends Daniel and Taylor. I could NOT believe it. What an answer to prayer-and that it was those guys out of 600 students on the ship-those guys that I was thinking when we arrived in China how I wish I could spend more time with them while in port, and then I randomly ran into them in Hong Kong and was able to spend an evening with them there, thinking cool God, thank you! But then thinking, probably won't get to hang out with them for the rest of China, darn, oh well. And then, boom there they were-saving us! I sprinted to them and gave them huge hugs. I was in disbelief. Now that is an answer to prayer if I ever did see one!
Turns out we were really close to the ship-about a 15 minute walk. The guys saw how distraught we were and dropped their plans and walked us back to the ship. What a sight we must've been-we had backpacks on our back, I had big shopping bags in each hand and a ukele, and we hadnt showered in a few days. I was able to spend the rest of the day with those guys-it was great, and I was so grateful to spend more time with them! We had such a great day/evening. Nate, Daniel, Taylor and I walked to the Bund, where you could see a perfect view of the Shanghai skyline. We hung out there for a while, enjoyed the view, Nate and Daniel danced, and then we kept walking through the beautiful city of Shanghai. I really liked Shanghai! At night it was so gorgeous! So many beautiful, colorful lights! Such a fun city to be in! We walked down this cool street with no cars, but a whole lotta action. There was live music coming from a couple stories up out a window at one part and there was a huge crowd gathered underneath. We were walking by, and all of a sudden this Chinese man pulls me into a clearing surrounded by many people, and starts dancing with me. We danced the whole song-it was a blast. Other people grabbed my friends and started dancing with them too! Such a fun time! We kept walking after that and stumbled upon a cute little small carnival like area, where they had a couple rides. We went on one of those claw rides where you go high, fast, and upside down-ensuring an amazing time. Riding on that thing at night in Shanghai was so cool. You could see so many beautiful city lights..it was incredible! We went back to the ship for some free dinner, then went out to this cute bar where a bunch of SAS kids were headed. We had a BLAST there! There was a Chinese girl and guy singing up on the stage. One of my friends said Bryana and I could sing, and so they let us go up there and pick a karaoke song from their ipod and take over the microphones! A bunch of girls were up there singing a 90s song. Oh, it was so much fun!
The next day I explored the city with 2 of my very closest friends on the ship, Andrea and my roommate Julie. We had such an amazing day. We were all on the same page, and were all so positive, and happy and appreciative, and felt so blessed. It was a perfect day indeed. We went to a museum, sat in a beautiful park by beautiful cherry blossoms, watching adorable children with their parents. In China you can only have one child, and it was really evident to me that the parents and grandparents ADORED their child, and I think because they know how precious that one child is because its the only one they can have. Every single parent I saw was just so joyful around their kid, and looked at their kid with such admiration..it was so beautiful..so touching. And asian babies are so freaking adorable! How could you not be happy around them! After that, we decided to go to the top of the Raddison-where there was a restaurant overlooking the whole city, and it rotated, so you literally see the whole city! It was so cool and so beautiful! In the lobby there were bunnies and chicks because it was the day before Easter! We held the bunnies..what a perfect Easter surprise! After enjoying the high views and food we found a bakery with amazing breads and pastries. We then stopped at a market, before heading back to the ship and sadly waving goodbye to beautiful Shanghai.
China was filled with more beautiful Godwinks and blessings. As I watched the rainbow lights of Shanghai disappear, I caught myself in disbelief at the fact that we were down to our last country...Japan.
Its been a couple months, but visiting China feels like just yesterday. I've been thinking about Semester at Sea more than usual lately. I can't believe how much I miss it..I mean I can..but I just didn't know I would think about it everyday and long for it.
Time for bed-I'm teaching a swimming lesson tomorrow to adorable Abby-my supervisor's daughter, and then off to The Price is Right! Cross your fingers-hopefully I'll win a car or something ;) a cruise would be nice...
Yet again, so much has happened in my life here in Cali, including a trip to San Diego this weekend. Soon to come, Cali updates and my stories and memories of JAPAN!
