Shanghai-past couple days

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Its been raining the past couple days so the evenings were more exciting than during the day.

I had posted on couchsurfing that I wanted to go for dinner with other members. So at 6:30 we waited at the meeting spot at one of the train stations and 11 people showed up! We had people from all over the place. Mexico, Hong Kong/Australia, Canada, China, England, and Taiwan. It was a lot of fun.

Yesterday we met Rebecca (a girl we met the night before at dinner) for brunch and she greeted us with milk teas. She then took us for delicious dumplings (which we later went back for more) at 2 different places. After, she brought us to a famous Shanghai cake shop.

We spent most of the afternoon on skype.

For Christmas, Tris and I said we could spend $20 each. We've walked through the fake markets a few times and have always noticed that there are no designer handbags anywhere. Today we decided to ask about a coach purse. It was one of the wildest experiences I've had in quite a while. This lady put her phone down, yelled something in Chinese to another vendor, and literally moved walls, turned keys to a large mag lock and shuffled us through a small passageway into a small designer bag paradise. My adrenaline started going when she started pulling different purses off the shelf. I actually had to stop and catch my breath because I was so utterly shocked by it. There was every designer brand you could imagine copied perfectly to the untrained eye. Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Coach, Burberry, Italian brands etc. I ended up bartering down to 140 rmb ($20). When we walked out we were both so shoked. When we looked into every purse store we could then spot out every hidden room. I don't know why we were so blinded before, but just wasn't something we expected. It was actually pretty cool. We wish we would've come down from our excitement and actually looked at what she had.

Shanghai is known to have some of the best acrobats in the world so we went to a show called ERA-Intersection of Time. It was phenomenal. Some of the children i the acts were so young, and the way these people could bend, jump, their stamina and strength was unbelievable. They had 10 girls on one bicycle, they had 8 motorcycles doing loops in the cage at once, they had trapezes, and cartwheels, jumping 10 ft high off the ground.... it was a really cool show.

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Photos

Lidia and Salvador
Mexico

Chris and Troy
Taiwan and China

Jayne
England

Raj
Indian decsent but fully England