Last Day in China

Today we spent the day wandering around Shanghai. We wanted to take a cab to the old part of the City and had no map and no idea where it was. We asked like 4 door mans where we were and where we were trying to go and all of them said they didn’t speak any English. However, they all know how to say, “I don’t know English.”  We finally got in a cab and the driver had no idea what we were talking about and so we got out and found friends that had a map. Then we went to the metro station and got a ticket to the old city. When we got out of the metro we left our friends who had the map and were standing looking lost and a little old lady came over to me and asked if we wanted to go to the old city? I said yes and asked her if she spoke any English at all and she only spoke a tiny, tiny bit. She took us to exactly where we wanted to go and tried to explain to me where she lived and that she had lived in Shanghai all her life. She was so sweet. I just wanted to fold her up and put her in my bag and bring her home with me! She was SOOOOO cute! Sometimes when you are traveling, it is easy to get worn out with the language barrier, the overload, the unfamiliar, the everything new, the here, there and everywhere…so when you find those kind people (the mom in South Africa who gave me a hug, the school teacher in Vietnam and the sweet little old lady today) they make everything better, they make the world seem small, and they make everything seem possible. It was just what we needed! We got to a long street of vendors and we have now been around the world and so we are pros at cutting the prices in half. We saved a ton of time by naming our price and walking away. Actually, the language barrier was so fuzzy that we typed prices into calculators and then walked away! But it was a success! The weird thing was that I heard Christmas music playing in English today, but I didn’t meet a single person who spoke English…go figure. Tonight we are all back on the ship and heading for Japan. Classes are back in session tomorrow! Hope all is well! Love from China! xox