(Tea tasting room at tea house with my new friends)
I arrived into Shanghai Monday afternoon & after figuring out the metro system I got to my hostel around 3:30pm. At this point took a nap, checked my email, researched some travel plans, got some food and went to bed early. I was so proud of myself. The next morning I got up late and hit the road walking. I was walking through some of Shanghai's main streets checking out the sights when 4 Chinese university students stopped me and wanted to speak English with me. After to talking them a little bit I figured out that they were on holiday from Xi'an, a town near the Terra Cotta statues with the one guy being from Shanghai & acting as their tour guide. They invited me to a traditional teahouse they were headed too up some side streets. So, I joined them and had such a great time. I learned so much about tea. The teahouse host did not speak any English, so my new friends were quite excited to be translating everything to me in English. The host started by pouring tea into the tea tasting cups, but than succeeded to dump the contents of each cup over this little figurine she put on the table. I soon came to find out that they offer the first drink of tea to the tea-god here. It is a little statue that of a frog with a fishtail, coins on it and colored beads on its back that represent wealth, love, happiness, etc. So the first cup of tea was poured over this little statue which was a way of serving the tea god first. After this I tasted sweet teas, bitter teas, and everything between. It reminded me a lot of wine tasting, learning about the color, smell, body and original seed and plant the tea came from.
After this great experience I went explore the some of the architecture, tall buildings, the river and other areas of Shanghai. After an exhausting day of walking all around I went back to the hostel for a quick nap and than met up with my friend Lola from Nigeria that was traveling in Shanghai at the same time as me. Her and I than headed to an acrobat show that my friends I met earlier had recommended to me. Following this Lola and I went up the tallest building in Shanghai to its bar on the 93rd floor. Her we caught up a bit more, had a drink and enjoyed a live band. Listening to the music made us both want to dance, so we found a place with a bit of a dance floor and good music. Next thing I know it is after 1am and I was not in bed. So, I once again was not able to follow my concept of getting to bed early and resting up, as I am sure dancing for a couple hours does not count as rest. None the less it was a good day. The next day Lola and I slept in on my request and than went searching through the markets for a coat for her. Without any luck we headed to the Shanghai Museam, which is an impressive museum with four floors of great exhibits from the Bronze age, monetary system, dress, pottery and many other thing on display. I was really surprised when I found out the museum was free. After being throughly exhausted from walking around the museum for hours the two of us made a very exhausted swagger out of the museum with the goal of finding food! After a bit of walking we found a restaurant and had a great time trying to get the waiters to understand what we could and could not eat when they brought us eel. (Neither Lola or I can eat eel). After lots of confusion, we got food we could eat and got our energy back with it. With our new found energy we were able to find Lola her perfect coat and get back to the hotel in time for her to head off to the airport and on her way back home.
The next morning I decided to start traveling outside of Shanghai and get on my way. I continued the practice of trying to let myself get more sleep, so I slept in a little later than initially planned & ended up quickly chatting to my brother and father of Skype. By the end of all of this I had missed the first 2 trains and was going to take the third train to Hangzhou, the only problem with this is that I come to find it is running 3.5 hours late. So I did not get to my destination until just before sunset. I saw what I came to see, but I missed a whole days worth of additional places I wanted to get to. When I arrived at the train station to get the night train up north to get to Ji'ian, I was too late. The train had been booked out and there were no seats, so I got a ticket on the train to the city halfway, which I knew had many transfers to the final city I wanted to get to. The only problem was when I got there, they could not fit me on a train until 10am the next morning, which meant I ended up sleeping on a bench in the train station (yes it was safe, for all of you worriers out there) and spent the entire next day traveling instead of traveling at night like I had planned. Because of further delays and issues along the way I ended up not getting into Beijing until 1am & the taxi driver dropped me off at the wrong spot. This meant at 1am Friday evening I was walking around streets in Beijing looking for a place to stay. Thanks to an amazing Chinese man who was riding his bike home and stopped to show me around I finally found a random hotel, paid an expensive price, but had a place to sleep. The moral I can gain from these last few days, which have been so frustrating, is that I can not sleep in anymore. I have to get up and get with it while on this trip, I will have to rest when it is all done! So after today I am back to my crazy schedules & hopefully my body can keep up. :) Although, to bed early is still a goal every night.
(Jenifer, myself, and Lola just before Lola left me)
The language barrier has been a bit different than I am used to. I am used to being able to at least recognize the characters of the alphabet & sometimes hear a word or two that are similar in English. Here, that is very much not the case. It is definitely taking my travel skills up a notch. I have been coping, but with some fun times along the way. I will try to tell you some of the stories in the next blog.
~Laugh & Love Life~
