Home Stretch

Sorry for the gap in posts; it's been pretty busy around here as we gear up for our final two weeks.  I have one week of class left before a week of finals, then I head home on December 14.  That flight should be a fun one--I'll be spending around 20 hours in the air while only moving around 8 hours forward in time.  In fact, I'll be landing at LAX one hour before I left Nanjing.

A couple weeks back I finally made my trek into Shanghai to see the sights and smell the tea.  While a beautiful city, I'd still recommend Nanjing or Beijing as a better locale for getting the "feel" of China.  While you can still find some jiaozi dumplings on the street in Shanghai, they're always going to be right next to a McDonald's or a Starbucks.  That said, we went to a giant tea market with open-air barrels of the stuff all around.  I picked up some amazing wulong partially-fermented tea that I'm trying to make last back to the states.  No promises. 

The Shanghai Museum is an especially cool spot.  My favorite exhibit was the collection of foreign currencies exchanged on the silk road, ranging from Assyrian to Greek to Roman to kingdoms that don't seem to exist in any other historical records.  

Pictured are The Bund in Shanghai along the Huangpu River and some tea from the Datong Tea Market.