Day 25: 2/3 Visiting Half of My Roots

                This morning I woke up and looked out my window to see land not far from the ship.  We weren’t quite docked yet, but rather we were navigating through a river to where our ship would be docked in Shanghai.  Jillian and I, again, went up to try to see the sunrise, but it was so gloomy out that there really wasn’t a sunrise to see.  When we finally docked, I noticed that my room had a fantastic view of the Pearl Tower across the river from our ship, which made me excited even though I would only be there for that one night.  Jillian had a field lab today, so I planned to venture into town with Sawyer, Kyle, and Alexa.  Before we could go anywhere though Kyle, Sawyer, and Alexa needed to exchange some cash.  As we walked to a nearby bank I realized that I was still wearing my moccasins instead of actual shoes… whoops!  I was planning on just dealing with the mistake since it would take a while for everyone to get off the ship (since we couldn’t get back on the ship until everyone got off and the ship was “cleared”), but we found out that in order for them to exchange money they had to go through an extensive amount of paperwork.  I saw my window of opportunity!  As they were waiting in line I was waiting to be able to get back on the ship to change my shoes.  After about 20 minutes or so I was able to board the ship.  I raced (well more like sped-walked) to my room, changed into my Merrells, and raced back to the gangway (where we get on and off the ship while it is docked).  There really was no need to practice my speed-walking abilities (even though I’ll probably be training for the Olympics pretty soon since I’m that good) because they were still waiting to get their money exchanged.  It probably took an hour or so for them to exchange their money.  Once they did we headed towards town.  We walked a pretty good distance to get into town and then walked down a street where some shops were.  We were looking for some underground shopping to be able to get a good, cheap deal and be able to haggle with people for items.  There was no such luck as we walked down this street.  We found a mall and decided to get something to eat. 

After we were refueled we decided to walk to another part of town.  On our way we wandered into a little souvenir shop and there it was.  An escalator, going down under the building, dwelled in the back of this random store.  We went down the moving staircase to find a bunch of vendors dealing and bargaining with customers.  We found one!  We spent the next hour or so walking around haggling and buying little things that we wanted or got for gifts for those back home.  Even though I’m not very good at haggling, I have to admit it was kind of fun.  There was this sort of rush that went along with bargaining; it almost turned into a sort of game.  We left the underground area with a sense of energy and joy at getting some good deals.  We then continued to the area we planned to go to when we got distracted by the underground market.

We went to what we thought was supposed to be “Old Town,” but I’m not 100% sure that’s where we actually ended up.  We stumbled upon this area with tons of vendors similar to the ones at the previous underground market.  If we were impressed by the market we came across earlier, our minds were blown when we came to this place.  There was a building about seven stories tall filled with vendors, and on the streets there were more filling every nook and cranny of the area.  It was pretty amazing how many people were trying to sell things.  It was fun at times, but at the same time it got kind of scary when the people would push so hard for you to buy something from them and to have people all up in your grill trying to show you what they have for you to buy.  I felt very overwhelmed in this area.  There was one moment when a man was trying to sell Kyle a North Face jacket, but in order to get to his “store” we had to go through this little alley and go into this little room that had jackets and sunglasses and other “brand name” items.  I know it sounds sketchy. I thought the exact same thing when we were going there, but I guess it is kind of the norm to do that if you want those kinds of items.  It still seems sketch to me though.  We left the chaotic market area and headed to get some dinner.  We ended up at a Canadian restaurant/bar… yes Canadian.  I don’t know why there is a Canadian restaurant in China when I have never heard of Canadian food.  We walked back toward the ship and got to see a gorgeous view of the city at night.  We got back to the ship and I was going to go out to some bars with Shelley and some of her friends.  We started to walk back into town, but didn’t really end up going anywhere.  We walked and walked and walked some more until we made a funny-shaped loop.  At that point Shelley and I decided that we’d just go back to the ship and go to bed because we both had to pack for our trips the next day and get some sleep.  We got back and I took off my shoes to find some lovely blisters that had formed on the bottom of my pinky toes… seriously, who gets blisters there?  I grabbed some of my lovely Band-Aids that Keenan so kindly gave me for Christmas and wrapped my injured toes before going to bed.