first of all, we took the G train, the new fast train, for the first time, and it was amazing!! we probably thought it was super super amazing because of our very recent experience with the K train (the super slow train) and missing trains and standing on trains and being crowded on trains. yeah. so here charis and i are super excited about the G train.
also, while we were on the G train, at one point i looked out the window, and there was a K train passing us!!!!! (you can recognize it by it's red stripe, and it's older dirtier look. the newer trains are whiter and have blue stripes). anyway. we are passing you, K train, as you creep along, we are traveling at 300 kph! HAHAHAHA.
when we got to shanghai, we headed to the lovely mister donut for some donuts, of course. after a slight glitch in which i "remembered" the wrong subway station that it was at, we found the right station and, of course, there mister donut was. we had some excellent donuts, and i had milk. milk in china that is acceptable to me is a rarity.
as we were about to leave mister donut, i felt like i had a mosquito bite on my lip. a little bit unpleasant. especially since when i get mosquito bites, they swell up and are red. so there is this red swollen thing on my lip that is getting more swollen as time goes on. after a little while though, it seemed a bit too swollen to be a mosquito bite. and it itched like a mosquito bite, but also not like one. and then it didn't really itch anymore at all, it was just swollen. it didn't really seem to be a mosquito bite anymore. it started on the left side of my upper lip and soon that whole half of my lip was swollen, and it spread to the left side of the lower lip too. then (as we take the subway towards the bund, and then walk down the road to the bund) it spread to my entire upper lip. it got more and more swollen. it was quite uncomfortable. and it was very strange. why was my lip swollen? i had no idea. so we walked on the bund. and i refused to be in any pictures. but it was a lovely day.
i really like the shanghai skyline. and i like that i took this picture. yay shanghai!we searched for a dumpling restaurant that someone had told us about, and we found one, but it didn't seem to be the right one. but we ate there anyway. i wasn't in the best of spirits. after this, we went on a hunt for some sort of medicine to reduce swelling. we eventually found a pharmacy and bought something that resembled benadryl. i don't know if it helped or not. the swelling went down eventually. but it was swollen for the rest of the day. very strange and unpleasant. i have nothing more to say about it.
later in the day, we decided we should find the US embassy. so we took the subway to the nearest stop for that. we walked around a bit in an old european section of shanghai, which was quite beautiful and i'd never been there before. we found the embassy, and proceeded to walk around it because we wanted to find an entrance. but the vehicle entrance we saw must have been the only entrance, because we never saw a walk in entrance. which is too bad. it would have been fun to enter the embassy using our US passports, just because we could. by the time we realized we weren't going to find another entrance, we were quite far from the vehicle entrance we'd seen. that place is big.
anyway, we ate dinner at macdonalds because we were too lazy and indecisive to pick another place. by then i could eat normally (unlike at the dumpling place, i could barely take a bite of a dumpling...oh my). and we took the G train back! yay G train!
except i have to say, about the G train, it doesn't really go as fast as it was advertised at going. it isn't even really much faster than the D train (the next fastest train). it's maaaaybe 15 minutes faster, but that's about it. they say you should be able to to take the G train from where i live to shanghai in 30 minutes, but it's not true, because every time i've taken it (several times since that day too), it's taken 45-50 minutes. so.... while G train > K train, booo to it just the same for its false advertising and thus non-proportional prices for amount of time spent traveling. if the G train takes 45 minutes and costs 60 kuai, but the D train takes 60 minutes and costs 40 kuai, which is the better deal? 45/60 = 3/4 and 40/60 = 2/3. 3/4 > 2/3 , therefore the D train is a better deal...clearly. the only real advantage to the G train is that it leaves from a nicer newer train station and it does go directly to the hongqiao airport...if you want to go there...which i usually don't. but one time it was useful. and there are less D trains now, because of the G train, so people are pretty much forced to buy more expensive train tickets if they want to get to shanghai. boooo G train. at least with the K train you pay for what you get. haha. that is the end of my G train rant. probably whoever is reading this could care less about the types of chinese trains anyways!! =)
oh, and on the train on the way back, we were meeting friends at the station. and there is a joke that our friend was born in woodstock. which he was...woodstock, illinois...i think... yeah. so we made him a woodstock sign to greet him so that he'd be able to find us at the train station.
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