Greetings from Shanghai!

Ni hao! So it's been a while since I've done one of these, but I'll give it my best shot. It's the end of the 1st day (we got in last night...that was one hell of a flight) and wow, it's been amazing so far. The first thing I noticed when we got here was the crazy amazing and creative architecture of all the buildings in both new and old Shanghai. I'm not sure how exactly to describe it, so I'll post up some pictures later.

Today we visited the Yu Yuan garden, as well as the Chenxiangge Nunnery. Afterwards we had steamed dumplings at this really popular place in the middle of a market center in old Shanghai, next to the Chinese garden. We then walked along the Bund and had drinks atop a tower overlooking the Huangpu River. After that the rest of the group decided to go back to the hotel and rest while Tim, Jen, Jesse, and I tried to ramp it and find a way to get across the river. As fun as that adventure was, it was not very successful. Apparently the pedestrian tunnel we wandered around forever trying to find was in fact not a pedestrian tunnel but a traffic tunnel...great. Oh well, we kinda know our way around better, I guess? We then reconvened with the rest of the group and had a ginormous dinner at the Shanghai Cuisine restaurant and then went to the 88th floor of the Jinmao tower, one of the tallest towers in the world. I got some sweet pictures of that too that I'll post later. Oh, and beer is ridiculously cheap here, so I've had quite a bit to drink today. Wo zhui le! 'Til next time!