China Days 6 & 7

                Well, on the 6^th day we once again had to get up very very early for a flight. We left our hostel at 5:30am and our flight life at 9am. So the whole morning was once again a travel day. I love travel mornings like this though because it gave me time to catch up on the much needed sleep. Once we got to Shanghai we had to once again get off the plane and figure out how to get from the airport to our ship. This does not sound very difficult, but when you have visited nine other countries and you don’t speak any portion of the language your brain starts to confuse things. Oh well, it was still fun to try and figure it out.

                Once we got on the right train we just people watched for about twenty minutes. It is amazing how fast trains go in China. It made me realize how slow stuff in the states moves. When we got off the train we then had just a five minute walk to the ship. Well, the ship was not really where it was supposed to be so it took us almost a half an hour to find the ship.

                After we found the ship we all took naps and showers. Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.  It was really nice to just relax a little. After dinner I hung out with Molly, Meagan, and Matt around Shanghai. I think this was one of my favorite cities at night. I really enjoyed just walking around downtown Shanghai and getting to experience the night life of another city.

                On my last day in China I had a field experience. I went and saw two different Buddhist temples. The first one had a pagoda which is where the ashes of the original Buddha are kept and used as a place of worship. It also had a few temples with different Buddsadfas, statues of Buddha himself, and other gods and goddess to worship. The temple was full of people there on a Saturday morning to worship Buddha and to make wishes or prayers to each of the Gods. The god that was the most popular was the fertility god; anyone who could go to this God and pray for fertility of any of their family members. I think this is so strange only because I am not familiar with this religions practice.

                The second temple I went to was the Jade Buddha Temple. This is where the only two remaining jade Buddha statues from Burma are housed. These statues were beautiful! It was interesting how drastic in size they were from one another. They were still beautiful though. At this temple I also got to taste what the Chinese call Buddha tea. This is herbal tea that has medical uses. Most of the tea was delicious. Of course I had to purchase a little bit of my tea which is actually supposed to help with relaxation.

                Once I was finished with my FDP it was time to get back on the ship to leave to go to Japan. I loved China. It was a great experience between the language barrier, the drastic culture difference, and the sheer number of people. I know that I would love to come back here one day. I can’t wait to get to Japan though!