Independence Day - Chinese-style

Happy 4th of July to everyone! It's a weird feeling celebrating the 4th overseas where that day means absolutely nothing to everyone else here, but we celebrated nonetheless in very traditional American ways.

The Chinese massage place was in this rather "sketchy" looking block, but turned out to be a very nice place. An hour massage for $6 in US money is such a good deal! After that, we all slept very well for the first time on this trip.

The following morning, we hit our preparations pretty hard given that the kids are coming on Monday. I spent most of my day making copies for everyone else. Copy jobs that would have taken a minute on the machines that we have at PACT take ten minutes here, so that was frustrating, but I made do with what I had.

After work, we decided to go out and celebrate the 4th by doing explicitly American things. First, we went to downtown Shanghai in a van. I'm pretty sure that it was meant to seat 8 people, but we crammed 12 very hot, sweaty, and tired people into it. Then, of course, we hit rush hour trying to get there, so it took over an hour to get downtown. We've discovered that the lines on the roads for lanes mean absolutely nothing at this time of day! There were cars five or six across the road on a highway with two lanes drawn on it. (They were so close to each other that I could have reached out of our van and adjusted the mirror on the guy's car next to us, but I didn't!) Combine this with the fact that the van did not have a very good air conditioner, and it made for a pretty miserable trip.

When we got down town, we found a Papa John's and indulged in pizza to honor our American heritage. (No brats or hamburgers were to be found!) It was so nice to actually have a fork and knife to use instead of chopsticks! Then, we walked around this huge mall for about an hour. It was the mall's second anniversary and there were massive sales, so there were tons of people there. There is a growing middle class in China, especially in the large cities, so now malls are popping up all over the place.

After the mall, we went to Wal-Mart to purchase some supplies for the trip, except that this was unlike any Wal-Mart I've ever seen. First of all, it had three levels, like a department store, except that each level was about the size of a standard Wal-Mart in the states. The first was all fresh produce and foods (and smelled like bad fish)! The second was dry groceries and the third was everything else. We were hoping that we could get things like construction paper, hard candy, and so forth, but most of the things on our list were nowhere to be found, which has put a big hinderance on arts and crafts and decorating! (We have pictures that we'd love to show you when we get back.) In addition to this, the place was absolutely packed (think shopping the day after Thanksgiving-busy), which shocked us because it was 9:30 pm. Who goes shopping at Wal-Mart late on Friday nights??? Oh well. We got what we could and got out of there as quickly as possible and headed back for the hotel. In good traffic, we found out that the drive was only 20 minutes!

We were hoping for a good night's sleep, but were rudely awakened by the couple across the hall from us shouting loudly at odd hours of the morning out in the hallway. Suddenly, we'd hear the door slam shut (which I'm sure woke up the entire floor), and then silence, only to be followed by more shouting 15 minutes later! Hopefully we'll get everything set up for "immigration" (or orientation at a normal camp) quickly today and then be able to rest up for the big day on Monday when the kids come.

We're all pretty burnt out right now because we've been working rather long days (9 am until 9 or 10 pm each night, if not later). We've planned a sight-seeing excursion on Sunday, but my guess is that several of us will be too wiped out to enjoy it! We're really looking forward to working with the kids on Monday. Jamie and I can't wait to tell you all about it!