The World Unfiltered

Disclaimer: The content in normal font is the original text from the journal I wrote on this trip when I was eleven, and my comments from current 22-year-old me has about younger me’s writing are italicized.

Day 7

I got up about four minutes after aunt tracy said I have to get up. How dare you. She said ive done really well of getting up in time. That is news to me. The hardest time was on the train. We had breakfast at the hotel and then went bike riding on the City Wall. This wall was built for protection but was separate from the Great Wall. I had to ride on a bike built for two with Aunt Tracy because the individual bikes were too big. I sat in the back and I didn’t feel any different when she stopped peddling and left me to do all the work. There were a lot of what looked like carnival or parade decorations along the wall, but I don’t remember more than that. I might have a picture somewhere. After riding, we went back to the hotel to have lunch in the café. I had chicken, egg, rice, and miso soup. That is Japanese. Hmm..japanese food in China..well I guess we have everything in america. They even have as many mcdonalds as we do. Oh goody. We are now on the bus to go to shanghai. We will be taking a two hour plane ride. I sit in the middle, aunt tracy sits on the window seat, and Stephanie sits on the aisle seat. The bathrooms on the plane aren’t very nice. You have to push a button to wash your hands, and it didn’t smell very good. Its an airplane bathroom, what was I expecting? We also had lunch on the plane. I had coke, turkey and two rolls. We landed in Shanghai and our hotel is called Metropole Hotel. It is Mac’s birthday today. The hotel that I had in Xi’an was called Hotel Royal. I stayed at the hotel while aunt tracy went out to look around. I stay home because I am not used to walking this much every single day. Sigh. Suck it up. Even though I do ballet six times a week, it stretches differently. Also I am not on my heels in ballet. Quite the opposite! Although I’m not sure if I got my pointe shoes shortly before or shortly after China. We went to dinner at a restaurant called Grandmother’s restaurant. I had rice, as usual, cucumber with garlic, and a nasty Chinese cake for Mac’s birthday. The bed in our hotel is quite hard, but with the sheets you can barely feel the difference. The beds in Beijing were hard like this also. In Xi’an they were very comfortable.