CRR09 Day 7, Tuesday - Shanghai

Tuesday morning brought us to our first field study without guidance from the tutors. My family met at the KFC outside the Suzhou train station at early hour of seven. We purchased our round-trip tickets on a previous excursion to insure we would all be on the same train in both directions. This was a good thought. Perhaps I should have insisted that I hold all of the tickets. Upon arrival one of the students realized that she did not have her ticket. After some panic and discussion a new ticket was purchased and we found the waiting room. Fortunately, train fare from Suzhou to Shanghai is not expensive ($3.50) and the first crisis was resolved. The fast train delivered us to Shanghai in about 30 minutes with a top speed rate of 222KPH. Watching the landscape pass by at that speed was a little disorienting at times and I took notice of the little bag in the seat ahead of me. The “hard” seat car was very roomy and would have been a first class cabin up in the air.

My group had little trouble navigating the streets of Shanghai finding the many doorway shops along the way. It was slow going as everything was a potential bargain. Most of our time was spent wandering Shanghai Lao Jie (Shanghai Old Street) with its traditional shops selling antiques, crafts, fish in little plastic bags, tea, and novelties (junk). Starbucks was our meeting point should anyone get misplaced. We tried local snacks and Kelvin found an addiction to Shanghai cream puffs eating them all the back to Suzhou.

We walked across the “Bridge of Nine Turnings” named for its zigzags which is supposed to keep demons away as they are afraid of corners. The only frightening things we encountered were the thousands of tourists both foreign and domestic. We were supposed to enter Yu Yuan, the Yu Garden but were told by more than one person that Yu Yuan was not a separate place but was the entire market place area we were in. Kojo set us straight upon our return but could not fault the kids.

Our return home was a little complicated as the lost ticket once again gave us a challenge. Not wanting to separate our group Lisa and Jet tried to exchange the new return ticket purchased in Suzhou for one on the same train as the rest of us. The ticket machine broke just when they were next in line so an exchange could not be made. Starting to panic the kids decided to ask people if they would swap their ticket for the one we had on a car five minutes later. After many failed attempts, a young woman came to our rescue and said she would take our ticket. We were all very thankful and relieved for a second time. The rest of our commute was uneventful returning us to LiDa and our host families on schedule.

It has been a joy sharing a host family with Isadora. Not only is she not shy with the language, she is not afraid of trying new foods. Here she is trying to figure out how to eat a shrimp still in its shell. Don't worry Elaine it is quite proper to use hands! Isadora is a great interpreter and she does not laugh at my attempts to speak Chinese even though she has had plenty of opportunities!