CHINA: Day 11

Sunday May 27, 2012

We were supposed to have church at 8 this morning, but the Birds, being the angels that they are, invited us to come to their ward which started at 11.  That was the best news.  Church was a long ways from the hotel and was held in this huge conference room.  The room was soooo hot and I was soooo tired.  I may have slept through a lot of Sacrament Meeting.  Oops.  I wasn’t the only one though.  We were all struggling.  We have been going so hard all day, every day since we got to China, and it finally caught up with us today.  We all just wanted to curl up on the floor and sleep.  I honestly have never been so tired in church before.  It was rough.  Sunday School was worse because the room was super small and about 20 degrees hotter.  I felt like I was suffocating.  I love going to church (especially in China) but it was definitely a struggle.

We were all very excited when it was decided that we would put our afternoon plans on hold after church to take a nap.  That was definitely needed. 

After we all recuperated, we took the subway to People’s Park.  The first thing we saw at People’s Park was “matchmaking corner.”  Not a joke, people go down to this corner of park with pictures of their children or grandchild and….matchmake.  How bizarre is that?  When Joe first told us about this, I thought it was kind of a joke.  It’s definitely not.  There was tons of people there wandering around with pictures talking to each other and trying to decide who would be the best match for their kid.  So crazy! I was just dying to ask them all these questions about how it all worked.  How do your kids feel about this?  How well do the matches that are made work out? How can you decide who would make the perfect spouse for your child by only seeing a picture and talking to his parents?  Does the girl who is in that picture know you are down here trying to find her a husband?  The whole thing was so crazy to me, but it’s just a different culture and, I guess, really isn’t that strange.

While there, we also found English corner.  This is where Chinese people go on Sunday afternoons to practice their English.  They all just meet up in English corner and then talk to each other in English.  Obviously, when a group of Americans showed up in English corner the people got very excited.  They all wanted to practice their English on someone who actually speaks fluent English.  They just flocked to us and started talking to us about all kinds of things.  I was impressed with how good their English was (I wish everyone in China spoke English like that!) and how comfortable they were talking to us.  That was a super fun experience. 

After the park closed at 6, we walked down this huge shopping district full of people.  We found an Italian restaurant that we got super excited about and decided to eat there for dinner.  I was thrilled to see spaghetti on the menu (I have been craving that).  It was definitely no Olive Garden….or even close….but it wasn’t terrible.  From dinner, we continued walking down the street to The Bund.  The Bund is this big walkway on the river that gives you the perfect view of the skyline on the other side.  By the time we got there, it was dark so everything was lit up.  I wish we could have gotten better pictures, but you really have to see it in person to understand.  It’s absolutely amazing!  The buildings are almost futuristic.  It’s so much different than like the New York skyline, which is impressive but mostly tall, rectangular, gray buildings.  Shanghai is full of buildings of all shapes and sizes and colors, and when they are lit up they are even more impressive.  They told us that 15 years ago, what we were looking at across the river was completely empty.  Now there is not an empty spot of land anywhere.  The interesting thing is that it was all built up and developed for no more reason than that the government wanted to have claim on the biggest city.  They built up this giant and impressive city themselves, and then sold off the buildings to businesses, etc.  Kind of interesting that they would spend all that money to build buildings that no one had even asked for.  Once again, different culture. 

At one point, the boys decided to walk on their hands for a minute.  You wouldn’t believe the huge crowd that gathered around that.  The people were looking for a show, so they did some more handstands and cartwheels (really nothing that unusual or impressive) and the people just continued to gather.  It was so crazy and so funny!

On our way back to our hotel, we ended up getting off at the wrong subway stop and while we could see our hotel from where we were, there was just no way to get to it.  We got back about an hour and a half later than we should have due to that little misstep.  We were a little frustrated about that, but it was a fun adventure I guess.  We were mostly just super excited to finally make it back.