A lot has happened since my last update. Mainly, I went on a trip to visit my big bro in Shanghai China. There is so much to write about! So much that I don’t really want to do that much writing. I’ll try to let the pictures do most of the talking and just write about the most memorable parts.

The journey, part 1 I was supposed to fly from Detroit to Shanghai with a short stop in Tokyo. Some highlights of that trip:

• Due to bad weather in Tokyo, we had to land at a military base to refuel
• Had to sit in airplane for 18 hours
• Remaining leg of flight cancelled
• Stayed in hotel an hour from the airport and got assigned a roomate
• Waited in line for 12 hours next day (no kidding)
• Slept on Airport floor
• Took bus to other airport, then flew to other airport (new Kansai – very cool) and saw the Pokemon 747
• finally flew to Shanghai two days late

There are many more details that make that travel experience even worse, but I’m tired of retelling the story, so I’ll save it.

New family My new sister (in-law) Joka greeted me at the airport in Shanghai. Although I had met her before, it was before she and my brother got it on so I didn’t get to know her very well at the time. However, I got to spend plenty of time with her in China and she is way cool. She hepled us get around and told us all sorts of interesting things about the country. She’s a lot of fun and I wish we could hang out more. Thanks for everything! The food The food in China is fantastic! it is so delicious and very affordable. It helps that we had Joka helping us order everything. One of my favorite parts was that they always had fresh, delicious, organic fruit with their meals. I love fruit! Getting a plate of watermelon slices before a meal is awesome! There were so many delicious things that I can’t list them all here. I tried many foods that are not common in the States such as cow tongue (tastes like steak), duck tongue (tastes like crap), chicken heart (like popcorn sized steak), intestines (I don’t remember – I think I was drinking), and duck brain. Duck brain is a tasteless paste, it was disgusting. I didn’t see any stuff that you would see in Chinese restraunts in the states. It was all different. I especially liked dumplings. Especially these sesame dessert dumplings. Egg tarts are really good too. A common beer there is Tsing Tao – so good. Transportation Transportation around Shanghai was pretty awesome. It is very easy to get a Taxi, if you have a map, you can get anywhere pretty much without having to speak mandarin. Additionally, the city has many nice new subway lines. Using the machines to buy tickes is pretty easy, and it only costs the equivalent of 50 cents to use! Early on I commented that we were in a relatively empty subway train when I said that there were more people sitting than standing. Wayne said that was a silly comment because there would always be more people sitting than standing. Ah, how naive. We had a fun experience in the subway when 3 subways worth of people had to crowd into one train. It was absurd, the thing was full to the brim of people squeezed up against each other. Nobody could move in any direction. We took a 12 hour train ride to Beijing, which was way cool. It was the most comfortable night’s sleep I had the whole time and was fun to stay up and watch the country side go by and hang out with Dave and Joka. To top off our transportation experiences, Wayne and I took the maglev train back to the airport. It was only like 6 bucks each and got us there in 8 minutes. The train got up to a top speed of 180 miles an hour. Maglevs are awesome. I wish I could take one to work. Beijing We spent 3 days in Beijing, the capitol of China. It was a very cool place. There were also many opportunities to say my favorite Chinese phrase: ‘Bu Yao!’. Some of the things we saw:

• The Temple of Heaven – a huge circular pagoda in the center of a gigantic park
• The Forbidden City – an enourmous complex of ancient walls, courtyards, temples, and palaces. All built for one guy – the emperor
• The Summer Palace – as if a mini-city full of concubines wasn’t enough for the emperor, he also got a mountain and lake full of gardens, sculptures, temples, theaters, bridges, and of course, more palaces
• The Great Wall – Probably doesn’t need too much explaning. The interesting things here were that we took a bobsled back down the mountain when we were done, which was awesome, and when we visited a closed off section some locals tried to charge us and threatened us so we called the police. It was an interesting lesson in local culture and politics. I got a great picture of a guy getting pissed off and throwing his water bottle at me

Shanghai

There were a lot of cool things in Shanghai as well:

• Some really tall building – Wayne and I went up in it. We were high up. I forgot the name of it
• The Old Town – the ancient center of Shanghai. It had many old style buildings, a neat garden, the temple of the city god, a famous teahouse and tons of people to say ‘Bu Yao’ to
• People’s Square – a large park in the heart of the city, it was pretty and had a cool city museum with a model of Shanghai that was larger than my house
• Go Karts – we went karting. Since there is no liability for the Kart place, the karts were extremely fast and we could play as rough as we wanted. There was much ramming and power sliding
• Acrobats – although they had some work to do on the artistic presentation side of things, there were some really amazing performances at the acrobat show
• The Fabric Market – a building packed with types of fabrics and tailors. Joka and I worked together to order a set of custom tailored matching Chinese style silk shirts
• Museum of Science and Technology – A museum with all sorts of interesting stuff. An exhibit on Hydrogen power, dancing robots, and a human versus robot archery contest. The robot beat Wayne, but was too scared to go up against me
• Skyscrapers – they go on as far as you can see for as far as you can travel in any direction

The Journey, part 2

On the way back Jody and I flew together. From Detroit to Raleigh, our plane was first delayed, then delayed again, then the boarded us and told us that there was no flight crew yet so we had to wait some more. Finally, they took the flight crew from another flight and got us home. The kicker is that our flight was scheduled to depart at 5 pm and the flight crew was not scheduled to be in detroit, so even if they had shown up (which they didn’t), we would have been late. They scheduled our flight to be an hour late. Well, that is all I’m going to say about it for now. It was a way cool experience. The best part was getting to hang out with Dave and Joka. I wish those guys would move back to Raleigh so we can have fun all the time.