Slowing Down in Shanghai

First of all, I would like to tell the story of the great Xi'an wall adventure. We decided to have our church service on Sunday night, so that morning we got up and went to the wall surrounding the old Xi'an. We climbed the stairs to the top and rented bikes!! It was so much fun because Hunter and I decided to get a tandem bike and try our luck... Our luck apparently is not the greatest, but it is fun. About halfway into our 14km ride, we discovered that our rear tire was flat. Haha! There wasn't a whole lot we could do about it, so we kept on going until we reached a stand selling water and stopped to rest. A man came up to us and pointed at our tire and simply said, "I'm sorry". We stared at each other and just laughed and agreed we were sorry too. He then took our bike and walked away... Since we had a deposit on this flat tired bike, we followed him to his table wondering if he had a bike pump. He didn't, but he DID have a new bike for us! We were so excited, we kept saying "Xie xie, Xie xie!!" (Thank you!) and rode off on our new bike. Only ten minutes later, Hunter said, "Amy, I kid you not...we have another flat tire" and we groaned and laughed and groaned again as people walking passed us and people on other bikes pointed to our flat tire. Every turn Hunter was "really sure it's just around this corner" and every tower was "definitely the one we started at". We figured at least it gave us a really good excuse for being second to last to get back.

Our stay with the family in the countryside was really fun! We arrived Monday afternoon and stayed until Tuesday. On Monday we went to the small school in the area and met some very talented children. The teacher said that their school's specialty is in art, and they have 2 professional art teachers. So the children sang some songs and did cartwheels and so on then gave us each some drawings they had done. We went back to our families' houses for dinner and that night had a special dancing party in the village square. The next morning we had breakfast with our families then went to the village meeting place for an art lesson in Chinese painting and paper cutting. After lunch with our families again we got back on our bus and headed back into Xi'an to do some last minute mailing (By the way, I mailed home a second package), laundry pick-up, and food buying before our 20 hour train ride to Shanghai.

Mail costs an additional $10yuan to box up...Laundry cost $54yuan for a couple shirts, my shorts and one pair of jeans to wash in dirty water with no soap and put into a bag not fully dry...and food consisted of Oreos, Coke, and strange Chinese-style Pringles. Man I wish I had some Febreze right now.

Now I am in Shanghai, and we do not have any formally organized tours set up here, so we are free to do as we like. I think most of our group likes to sleep. :) I did all the rest of my laundry last night in the bathtub and our room is covered with drying clothes. I'm hoping to catch up on some reading and writing in my journal then see what everyone else is planning when they all wake up.

That's all for now. I love you all!

Amy