Teradactyls, rhinos and more!

Hello friends! Here we are in Shanghai. We arrived in Beijing on the train on Monday (a full 20 minutes early!) and were very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get down to Shanghai. In the last hour or so of our train ride Elizabeth and I were putting together a plan (rather plans- plan A, plan B, plan C, etc.) for accomplishing all we needed to in order to get down to Shanghai. Get off the train, change some money, find out where the airport is, get to the airport, buy plane tickets, and finally get on the plane.

Well as we came out of the train station I noticed a "Air Ticket Office" sign. So we walked up to the counter and told them where we wanted to go and bought tickets for a 5pm flight (it was just before 3pm at this point). They even wrote down the name of the airport for us in Chinese so that we could give it to a taxi driver. So we got a taxi, went to the airport and caught our flight down here to Shanghai.

We are staying with Matt, one of Elizabeth's friends from college while we're here. He has been in Shanghai for about six months teaching English. Right now Elizabeth and I find ourselves sitting in City Diner with the full repertoire of Michael Jackson's career playing somewhat loudly in the background. I seriously haven't heard this much Michael Jackson in well over 15 years! It's cracking me up.

So what have we been doing for week since we last posted? Traveling. Lots of traveling. Traveling in the form of sitting on a train. After nearly a week on the train I thought I might never want to see another train in my lifetime. That is not at all how I feel though.

The train ride was absolutely incredible. We saw so much! From Moscow through various cities and villages in Russia, past the beautiful Lake Baikal, into Mongolia and through the Gobi Desert with wild horses and camels at watering holes and yurts dotting the landscape to the corn fields and sunflower patches and enormous canyons and gorges of China. Standing at the window staring out at the incredible sights hours could pass by without seeming like more that a couple of minutes.

The first couple of evenings were filled with games of Scrabble and Monopoly with our three British friends who we met at our hostel in Moscow. Generally not a fan of Monopoly because of the sheer ridiculous length of the games I was pleasantly surprised to find that we had finished a six or so hour game without having felt like we had spent a whole day playing. Somehow time on the train disappears as the thousands of kilometers pass by. Changing about an hour a day due to time zones has an odd effect on one's sense of time as well.

We are heading out, enough Michael Jackson for one sitting, but we will report back soon. Perhaps more on the train ride as well as our very interesting bunk mates (and their snoring and toenail clippings) next time. Definitely more on our Chinese experiences though. Be sure to ask Elizabeth about spitting food on the floor in the nice restaurant we went to on her birthday!

Take care.