tai chi in the park.

the group in shanghai.        

        The following day, I went for a run in the park next to our hostel. It was the Chinese version of a central park. Cute older Chinese people came out to the park for their early morning tai chi. Jungle gym type things, which reminded me of what would be built for children in the U.S., were all over the place and adults would use them for their morning workouts.

We had a dim sum lunch and then Emily and I split up for the afternoon. I explored a hip area of downtown called Soho. I spent a lot of time at a completely organic, hippyish restaurant owned by an Californian. He told me about the great revolution he sees brewing across the world and how everyone, sometime very soon, is going to come together and banish all wrongdoing, and hatred and war in the world. It was very interesting. After that I needed something a little more..."chinese" so I hung out in a dumpling restaurant, tried bubble tea at "the first bubble tea stand ever" and wandered through a flower market.
Josh suggested we go to horse races that night. But, once we got there, we found that the regular races weren’t happening because it was a public holiday.

We had to wake up early the next morning to get to the airport for our flight to Shanghai. Luckily things went smoothly at the airport and we were in Shanghai by 2 o’clock. We took the Shanghai metro, which is the largest subway system in the world, right from the airport to the boat.
That night, we went to the tallest bar in Shanghai on the top of the Park Hyatt, which has an awesome view of the city and extremely overpriced drinks.

the park hyatt.

The next day, a group of us explored the streets of Shanghai, eating amazing street food and walking through the garment district. We ate lunch at an awesome restaurant called Din Tai Fung. It was a dim sum restaurant. They have one in Seattle and another in Los Angeles. So, if you live in either of those places, I highly recommend going there. It was kind of a fancy restaurant and we order a good amount of food, but everything came out to $12 each.

That night was the first night of Passover. I reserved a spot at the Shanghai Chabad’s seder. What an experience that was. There were people from all over the world there. A good amount of people from Semester at Sea. A soccer team from Miami. People from South Africa, England, Spain, Austria, all over the world. The rabbi had everyone who knew a different language say the first question of the four questions in that language. It was pretty cool. The food was…interesting. I think their resources were quite limited considering the seder took place at the Renaissance hotel in Shanghai. But, the experience was still pretty cool, to be celebrating this holiday with people from all over the world in China.

at the seder in shanghai.

The last day, a large group of us went to an electronics market filled with knock-off Dr. Dre Beats, iPods, iPhones, whatever you could want. The indoor market was 4 stories tall and pretty overwhelming.

A group of four of us broke off from the group and eventually stumbled upon a park filled with small printer-paper sized posters with information about single individuals. People come there to find their partners. It was like the Chinese version of match.com. This was just the craziest thing ever to me.

Our last couple hours in Shanghai we hung out by the water, just talking to people and soaking it all in.

go blue.