Tami’s Travels

Wow, I turned into a really bad blogger the last five days. Things went a bit haywire on the way back to Shanghai, when the guy who was coordinating all of the a/v for the meeting wasn’t able to get into China because of a visa problem. I didn’t leave the hotel for four days, scrambling to pull the pieces together and step into his role. The good news is that the meeting went flawlessly!

Last night, after the meeting ended, Sara and I snuck out for a well-deserved celebration which included late night shopping, a great dinner and an hourlong foot massage at midnight (for $15!)

The flight from Shanghai to San Francisco was fine, but we landed in San Francisco in the midst of a big storm that had cancelled all of the flights to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. So, Sara and I grabbed lattes and rented a car, driving 6 hours in pouring rain and very bad visibility.

I am so happy to be home!!! Will catch up with some pictures on the blog later…

Very very appetizing…..

Clausterphobic Sara was a trouper on this packed subway on the way back to the hotel!

Wish we had time to go here…

This was half-way up a huge building – the statue was probably ten feet tall!

Tempura shrimp, noodles and seaweed – delicious!

Insert 100 yuan into the hole. Shake the metal cylinder, then take out a stick with Japanese characters out of it. Find the cute little drawer that matches your character and remove your fortune! Sara went first – her fortune talked about good luck in business, personal and love – the world is her oyster and she can do no wrong! On and on and on with her good fortune. Then, I pulled out my fortune, which began with “So many troubles and problems invade your family business, everything does not go so smoothly.” On and on it went about tigers demonstsrating  too much spirit to me, taking a long time to recover from sickness, lost articles not being found. The only good thing is that “there is no problem traveling.” I marched straight to the temple gift shop and forked out 500 yuan for a good luck symbol to try to counter-balance my bad fortune!

So, this guy was a famous swordsfighter in his day…. killed thousands and thousands of people. Then, when he was close to death he asked that his remains be placed under the sidewalk in a busy square, so that people could trample all over him in death to atone for all of his sins. Good luck, buddy…