I forgot to post these pics of our trip to China about a month ago, so here they are…
At the Billings airport, getting ready to leave...
Plane we're taking to Seattle Washington...
Washington mountains...
At Seattle airport, eating pizza for lunch...
Plane that takes us to Japan...
Display on airplane...
First view of Tokyo, Japan… Took us 24 hours to travel there, but it never got dark the whole trip to China!!!
Found these at the Tokyo airport...
John met us at the airport in Shanghai…10 minutes later I got in trouble for taking pictures of the customs area and had to delete them :( We also had a Chinese lady chasing us down saying "mini bus, mini bus…" when we were walking to the taxi line. John knew what to do and just ignored her. A few minutes later, he told us he had a work meeting on Wednesday and we wouldn't be able to go to the great wall….awwwww bummmer! Not a great way to start off our trip!!! So far, China's not making such a great impression on us!
View from our lovely hotel...
Front view of hotel...
Crowded subway we had to ride on several times….
Subway surfing!!!
Squatter toilet…saw and used many of these on our trip!
Our first taxi driver…terrifying taxi ride!!!
Riding subway again...
Downtown Shanghai...
Met up with a group of kids from Taiwan wanting to ask us questions for a school project...
Pictures from one of the tallest buildings here...
Autumn's terrified of the taxi ride…I agree!!!
Hanging out at Scrawny's apartment...
Touring the streets of China...
Awww the smells…not so good :(
John walking down alley to his apartment...
Eating our first and only breakfast off the streets of Shanghai…not too bad actually! Hot bun with some sort of sausage in middle and a croissant with egg, bacon, cheese and special sauce.
Walked the streets of older China and places where foreigners don't go. Got a lot of stares and pictures taken of us.
Decided to attend a chinese acrobatic show...
We also had a tea party at one of the shops in town…I thought the tea was awful, but me and mom were probably the only ones who thought so! I tried to be polite about it and I tasted all of the different kinds he offered us, but they were not so good...
Afterwards, had dinner with John's friends from Germany and girlfriend from Italy...
The dinner was very interesting that night and not really very tasty at all…we ate turn table style which is quite the norm around here…everyone just serves themselves from it. It took some getting used to everyone using their own chopsticks to serve themselves after they had already eaten off them!
The next morning (Tues), we decided to approach John about how we wanted to go to the Great Wall. He was a little upset because it would ruin his plans to go to his meeting and could cause him to lose his job. We spent many hours at his apartment while he tried to work things out with his boss. So, after a lot of arguing, name calling, tears, and hugs between all of us there, John finally worked things out so everyone would be happy. He ended up having to go to his meeting, but bought our train tickets to go to Beijing without him and then he would meet up with us on Wednesday night after he got done with the meeting. Autumn wasn't happy about any of this and thought we were being selfish by making him go out of his way to make this work. Me and Sherrill were the ones that wanted to go the most, so she was mad at us and kept saying this was a bad idea. She was worried about going to Beijing without John and that we might get lost without him. The rest of us were fine with doing it. Well, anyway, after wasting the whole day on all of this, we didn't have much time to do anything else that day, so we went to the zoo...
That night, we caught the 12 hour 7pm train to Beijing…we were able to get a car we could all ride in together. Aut and Sherrill ended up sleeping the whole time on the top bunks, while Stacy and Miranda and me and mom shared the bottom bunks. The ride went really fast and wasn't bad at all...
We finally made it to our apartment by showing the address john had typed onto our phones to the taxi drivers. When we got there, though, we couldn't find the entrance because it was in a back alley. It took us probably 45 minutes or so to finally find it. Phew! Then, since there was a Mcdonalds right next to it, we ate their for breakfast. All the while, Autumn was still saying it was a bad idea and being totally negative about it all. We didn't agree, we just wanted to have fun and an adventure. She said, "I like adventure, but only when it's safe"! Oh Autumn, what kind of adventure is that????
Our lovely room in our lovely hotel…me and mom shared a room, while Aut and Sherrill in one, and Stacy and Miranda in another...
The view from our hotel was a bit better than our last one...
Taking the taxi to Tiannemen Square...
A lot of people wanted to get their pictures taken with us while we there, so here's one example of that...
Here's one of us wanting to get pictures taken with some monks from India...
Here's our friend, Monty, who approached us as we were going into the forbidden city. he has a small art shop that he took us into and we ended up buying quite a bit from him while there...
After, he said he would take us on a tour of the forbidden city for a small fee…here's a pic he took of us while there...
After that, we left and had a heck of a time trying to get taxi's to take us back to our hotel since it was pretty far away and it was during rush hour. We panicked a bit as taxi after taxi turned us down before we eventually found a couple of them who would do it! That night, we again ate at Mcd's once we were too afraid to go anywhere else. John took the 5 hour train and got here late Wednesday night and then Thursday morning, we headed to the Great Wall! Here we are on the gondola headed up!
This was the best part of the whole trip cause we were all in great moods, not too many people, and we could just take our time and joke and have fun with one another!
To get down, we took toboggans except for Sherrill since she was too scared and mom cause she went with Sherrill so she wouldn't be alone. They ended up just riding the lift back down. The rides down were so fun, but would have been even better if we hadn't been slowed down by people going down really slowly. I actually liked the parts we could go faster on!
This is the sun blocked by all the smog in Beijing…wow!!
Ate at a noodle shop that night…quite tasty!!
After that, we went to get foot massages…not a very good experience, only because for one, I don't like my feet to be touched. I was worried about them being all gross and stinky when I took off my boots. :) For another, me, Stacy and Miranda got stuck in a room by ourselves and we didn't have John to translate for us and the whole time, they were laughing and talking amongst themselves and we could tell they were making fun of us, like our hairy legs and such! Oh so awkward!!! Although, we tried to do the same thing and made them feel the same way probably...
This was how the bathrooms were in our apartment, a glass wall so everyone can see you while you're in there, oh so wonderful!!!
We visited one ore place before we left Beijing the next morning, a garden where the emperor would spend a lot of his time. Can't remember the name!
Took 5 hour train back to Shanghai Friday morning...
Ate dinner that night with John's boss and family...
So awful!!!!
Picture of all of us ready to head home!!!
We rode the fastest train in the world to the airport on Saturday morning...
Sherrill got hung up going through security in Seattle…she had a lighter in a hidden pocket in suitcase that Jeremy had left in there awhile ago and she didn't even know it was in there! Funny how she made it this far into our trip before someone finally detected it!!!
Billings Montana!!
Car battery died while we were gone. Thankfully, Alan had come to pick up Stacy and Miranda and was there to give us a bump!
Our fight schedule….Had a great time!!!!
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