SHANGHAI, CHINA!!!! March 4-5th, 2007

A view of the harbor as we sailed "up river". If you know your geography well, you know that Shanghai is actually up river from the sea. It was very scary sailing into this harbor. There was DENSE fog and the captain had to keep blaring the fog horn. This harbor is like Interstate 20 between Birmingham and Atlanta! There were ships of all sizes and shapes around us...it was quite a maneuvering job by our captain. I am sure he did not get much sleep the night we got here! This is our first glimpse at what could be some of the most fascinating days we have on this trip. Unfortunately for us it is COLD!!! You will see how we managed in the photos. If any of you made a trip to Shanghai before 1990, you will not recognize this city. There are HUGE highrise buildings in every direction. In 1990, there was one. The city is ALIVE with people. This city is the most populated in all of China. Our guide today said they are bumping upwards to 20 million people here! Thank goodness they don't all have cars! Most ride bikes, walk or have cute little scooters. Buses and taxis are affordable too. I have a lot to tell you about Shanghai and it's history but it is late and we have to be up to go to Beijing in the morning, so I will fill in the blanks while we are in Beijing. We are taking our laptop to keep you all current! I picked just a few pictures to show off this unbelieveable city. I will say that I don't usually have a problem communicating in foreign countries. However, this place is some kind of different! I took the kids to the bank this morning to change some money. I felt like I had stepped back in time. People were waiting n benches and had taken numbers like at a Baskins Robbins to get help. A military guy saw me with the kids and said " American", I said yes, he showed us a seperate door. He ran us in to a seperate part of the bank and still nobody spoke English. I met two men from Bali and they spoke some English. They said I was in the right place. It was finally our turn after eating a handful of bank candy as we were starving, and we went to the window. A big Chinese man looked at my American money and said very fast "money changer". I said yes, he said "passport". My heart sunk and I felt like I Love Lucy when she did not have her passport to get back into Italy...oh well, I dug in my purse and had a xerox copy of Nicholas' passport in there. Since Nicholas was with us, he accepted Nicholas to handle the transaction! It was really funny, I waas depending on a nine year old to get me some cash! They let him sign the best he could and we hit the street with $300 Chinese dollars. We felt like we had really accomplished something. Nicholas felt like the man of the house for about 30 minutes. Here we go, and I will do better tomorrow. We had an Asian night before getting to Shanghai and Kathleen and Nicholas wore the Chinese outfits they got in Singapore.

We took a tour of a old Shanghai and ended up in an old garden. It was cold. We managed to find some more pigs to take pictures of! Kathleen had her trucker hat on, did not see any others, she looked very American in hers!

Nicholas has found a new love, money. He is collecting it from all the places we go and wants to go to banks everywhere we go. This is a picture of him with some Macedonian money from 7th century, that was in a museum.

Sites to see in the narrow streets. All still decorated for Chinese New Years!


This tree was in the old town. You could buy a small ribbon and throw it onto the tree for good luck for the new year. We did not have time to do it so we will have to come back another time! We got busy in old town and Kathleen and Nicholas both got down coats for $35.00 each. I got 3 cashmere sweaters, $7.00 each!! and a cashmere scarf $5.00. We had to get warmer clothes for our trip to Beijing. The high there is low 20's and will go down to 3!!! I hope the great wall really is great because we are going to be freezing while we are looking at it! More info and pictures tomorrow. I apologize for the lack of good info, will include some interesting facts tomorrow. You do need to know that the Olympics will be in Beijing in 2008. I am sure the city will be a bustle getting ready for that. Pray for our safe travels as we set out into the mainland China! We will have a guide with us the entire tme that speaks Chinese! Yeah!!