We arrived in Shanghai at around 7 in the morning, and then had a long walk with our baggage to our bus. Upon reaching the hotel, we all promptly showered to get rid of the stickiness from the train and the long walk, but it didn't do too much good considering Shanghai itself is more humid than Minnesota ever gets and going outside is like instant stickiness.
Today was pretty fun though, we got to go to another temple, eat, shop, eat some more, then go on a boat ride. The Temple itself was more interesting than previous temples in my opinion, because the temple seemed to be built around nature. There was a mountain within the temple walls, which meant a lot of stairs, trees, moss, and interesting gardening. The temple also featured a leaning tower, which actually leans more than the tower of pizza.
The boat ride was also quite interesting. We had the privilege of riding with a little girl, her mom, and her grandmother(?). She knew a little bit of English, but was also just learning Chinese as well. It was absolutely adorable to listen to her sing the ABC's up through G (she didn't know the rest) and interrogate Alex about his bloodline.
I find it interesting how much love goes into your child here. There's a lot of love elsewhere in the world, but I feel like the one child policy makes parents cherish their child more. It's also interesting how children are brought up here. I seems that they stress two languages on children more right from the start of their education. I believe that they start teaching Mandarin (speaking and characters), and English from elementary school. In the US, at least when I went through elementary school, we didn't need to learn another language. In middle school we took Spanish, but it wasn't stressed to continue learning Spanish past middle school, instead we can choose from whichever language that High School offers. But even then, we aren't forced to take a language.
A girl doing sketches in the temple
Sun setting over the boat ride
The little girl we met on the boat ride
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