What I love about this program is all the exploring ( the free exploring at that). The past weekend we oa tour of the Pudong area, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, and Xin TianDi.
The Pudong area is known as the "new" open economic development zone in China as the area has many financial aspects such as the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Shanghai Stock exchange. The area also has an amazing skyline, which contains the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. It has fifteen different levels , and the highest is at 350 meters. At that floor, you can sit on exteneded glass floors and literally see all the way down. It was pretty scary but exciting. I took many pictures, my favorite being with a statute of Haibao, which is the Chinese Mascot for the 2010 World Expo. As I was taking pictures, a group of Chinese women ran to take pictures with me but this time the lady was wearing a necklace and she was putting it up against my hair and my neck in the picture. I still cannot figure it out but it was worth a good laugh.
We were all pretty much starving so we went to a really nice restaurant.
Turn-table style again, but this time I mastered it! Lunch was really
nice. While waiting for our bus driver to arrive at the restaurant, the
street sellers were rushing around us trying to sell expo keychains. We
all, of course, were interested in looking because it would be cheaper
than buying it at the Expo shops. Before I could really look, the police
officers were grabbing them away. It is illegal to sell that stuff on the
street and while they do not get arrested or anything like that, they do
get rushed away.
The area of Xin TianDi is a really nice area which is a car-free zone. It
is filled with outside restaurants and shopping areas. It definitely is
more expensive than many places and it is not necessarily filled with
tourists, but intead, foreigners. Within this area, there is Starbucks,a
movie theater, and much more. It is also near the site of the First
Communist Party Conference. I loved this because it was another primary
source to the lecture from the previous week. We were able to tour inside
the site, although pictures were forbidden. My friend tried to sneak one
for my blog but the security guard was all over our plan. Sorry guys! We
stayed the day over in the area of XintianDi and I had my most expensive
meal yet for 45 yuan ( which is still only about seven dollars).
Overall, it was a great LONG day. Zaijian!
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Posted By: Alicia Tambe, Shanghai, China
