Hello to all!

We have been traveling at an entirely different pace.  2 countries in less than 10 days.  It has been a bit of a whirlwind.  When we are not moving forward, we seem to find ourselves without wi-fi powerful enough to allow us to post.  So…..here they come.  We have quite a few posts saved up….all ready to roll.

We are now in China.  We left Japan a few days ago (just a clarification as our posts may not quite appear to be in order as we get them all posted using our wi-fi from the AirBNB rental in Shanghai.)

We decided to stay in Shanghai, and get a good feel for what it means to live in this incredibly huge city (it goes on and on….forever).

We also find ourselves in the city during the Chinese New Year.  What this means is that the day we landed, no one was in the city. They had migrated back to their hometowns, the towns that they grew up in, and left the city shut down and somewhat abandoned.  The New Year is to be celebrated with family.  It is 7 days long, similar to our largest holiday. Very few businesses remained open.

In some ways, I am grateful.  It allows us to walk along the city streets with space between ourselves and others.  It give us a chance to slow down.  Lincoln and I did find that nearly the entire population of China (cannot be entirely true, but felt like it) arrived at Shanghai Disneyland at the exact same time we did.  It was chaos.  Disneyland opened during the summer of 2016….it is a grand show.  It is built just outside of Shanghai, 45 minutes by taxi, which oddly enough only cost us around $40.00.  The Disneyland Hotel was ah-mazing.  It was beds of feathers and happy natives shouting “Hi! and have a magical day!!”  They knew to scream this at us as we were the only two caucasian looking people to attend the park on their New Years Celebration.   Disneyland’s website warned people not to come to the park.  The tickets were sold out for the next 3 days.  Do not even try it. Our consierge kindly looked at us and asked if we knew that it was the largest celebration of the year.   I can assure you, if we had known, we would not have purchased our tickets 2 months prior.  But…..we were there.  And, had tickets.

We arrived at the park 2 hours before opening.  It took us 3 hours to get to the entrance.  Uggh.  It was excruciating to be so very close.  The loudspeakers screamed instructions, I think, in Mandarin.  We were clueless.  And, in a massive crush of people.  These people were as excited to be there as we were.   They were far more equipped to handle the masses.  They knew how to do it.  We did not.

These people continued to shuffle their feet and move forward as a single mass.  This was confusing.  It appeared there was nowhere to go.  Nowhere.  It was filled with people….everywhere.  The constant shuffle was exhausting.  I can only imagine Lincoln’s view of the adult bottoms in front of him.  Bottoms were packed in around his face. This crowd moved Lincoln and I along with them like we were water.  We oozed.  We did not have a choice.  There were always a few people in physical contact with us….it was a cultural experience we could never have seen coming.

Once entering the park, we gave up.  We had given it our all.  Nothing left in the tank. We were freezing (it was snowing), we were squished, and hungry.  We entered, turned around, hopped on the ferry, and sailed back to our feather beds.  The happy hotel staff provided us with room service of chocolate ice cream and a bottle of Pinot Noir (from Austrailia….it was just what mom needed).  On demand tv provided us with 3 Disney movies back to back.

At 5pm, we rallied. Disney would not get the best of us.  We put on every ounce of clothing that we had in our bags.  Linc had 2 pants, 2 shirts, 2 socks and 2 jackets.  We ran onto thef ferry dock!  We had a warrior cry as we boarded.  We will not be defeated.    We were in that park until 10 pm.  I carried a half limp Lincoln out. We managed to get on a few rides, eat caramel corn, and wander a maze or two.  We saw the fireworks over our head.  It was an extremely sweet victory.  We did Shanghai Disneyland.  On Chinese New Year.  The year of the Rooster.  We win.

And, Lincoln got to celebrate his birthday early in the park.  And, in that amazing Disney Hotel feather bed.  Mission accomplished.

Success!

Mad Hatter!

The masses!