bai bai

Cultural observation - they love minions here. one of the city trucks goes around playing fur elise as sung by a minion.

one of the teachers has a ringtone of minions singing "i swear." funny cuz he's mean and yells alot

sorry people but mr. ping isn't as rich as muhammed, miguel, or hansel so dont be expecting extravagant souvenirs. no circumcision hats this time cuz i on a budget

goodnight eyebrows

I love taiwan and i'll miss is very much. great lil country

goodnight coldplay

the food is going to be so hard to leave!

goodnight giant bun!

i'll miss the hilarious students (only some of them)

We got to stay our last few nights in the school's new building. it was like a 5 star hotel.

goodnight palace

So i was a lil sick to start my 1.5 week trip.

cholo alert!

 I started in Manila, Philippines for a day layover

Manila was awesome! strange culture shock for me! i went from chinese people to filipinos (it felt just like latin america!) and back to chinese people. double shock

Public transportation was really fun in Manila! I just hopped on and off a bunch of random ones and eventually got to the places I wanted to go.

this isnt the real transportation

Their buses are old us military vehicles (they call them jeepneys.) You just hop in the back and you all face each other. awesome

it's so convenient that i can just hop in these things and i fit right in (if i don't speak)

i went to the old spanish area called intramuros. pretty cool.

since i was sick i was too tired to find places to eat. can you believe that! i just grabbed convenience store food the whole time

then i flied to shanghai (oops i mean flew my english is sucking. it's cuz ive had classes in 6 languages!)

i hope they mix some sleeping gas in there

I used couchsurfing.com to find a place to stay in shanghai. i stayed with hikmet, a turkish muslim. he thought i was muslim for a while and we went to a halal restaurant. I told him i was mormon and he was really interested

the french had a colony in shanghai so there's some european architecture.

I spent time in Shanghai running around (literally running) looking for hikmet cuz he wouldn't ever answer his phone! ended up costing me most of my time in shanghai. long story

so i got sick of shanghai and decided to go to Beijing. but since it was may day weekend i couldn’t get a ticket so i had to find another place to stay.

2 life lessons (and i’m not going to forget this time!) - don’t rely on people who you aren’t sure are reliable (actually don’t rely on anybody if you can get away with it)

and

if you try to cheap out to save money you end up spending more money in the long run. and it’s more stress, effort, and time wasted - i should have just spent the money to stay at the hostel (they’re really cheap in china!)

i hope mom and dad are reading lesson number 2 (this reminds me of our cheap heater installation that was letting out carbon monoxide)

anyway shanghai the city was awesome. it was clean and modern. i could live there-probably the only place in china i'd like living. there were lots of westerners throughout the whole city.

observation - apple’s iphone sales are through the roof in china this year. in shanghai there are iphones everywhere.

observation 2 - wealthy chinese people live in the city. the government invests a lot in the cites but little in the rest of the country.

 

rant time! (just skip this part)

3 little piggy was more fortunate

i miss taiwan. it’s like china but richer, more polite, and with a heart (the slogan is taiwan-the heart of asia.)

communism killed china’s soul. now they are looking for their identity and they just want to take all the worst parts of american culture (the stuff they see in the media)

travel tip - just assume that everybody is trying to cheat you and every car will run you over- and you’ll be fine.

in one day this happened to me 10 times - someone asks you to take their picture, talks to you for a while, pretends to be your friend, and then tries to take you to a tea house where they will rip you off. SO ANNOYING! by the end of the day if anyone tried to talk to me i just said - “I DON’T WANT TEA!”

traveling all around shanghai during a big holiday with a big suitcase was wild! that suitcase got a beating! i also got stuck in the subway doors

you can sell your kids!

 So in the end - shanghai was awesome, it could have been more enjoyable tho. next up - beijing

thousands of parents match-making for their kids in people's park