Day 20 Blue Skies!!!

Finally, after being in Shanghai for 19 days, we get a day with blue skies!! This morning as we walked to work it was raining pretty hard and we were a little discouraged, but then when we left work it was gorgeous outside. Seriously, it was like the rain had washed away the smog and it was SO beautiful. Actually, I bet it pales in comparison to the blue skies in Utah and Seattle right now, but for us it was amazing. We took about twice as long walking home because we just soaked it all up and we had to properly document the occasion. It’s rare we see the Shanghai skyline against blue skies (actually, we never do) so we got a ton of pictures that all turned out pretty well, thanks to Evan, who surprised us all with his photography skills.

After work I hurried to East Nanjing Road to meet up with Helena for dinner at Pizza Hut! Pizza Hut is actually pretty nice here and we were both craving American food, so we decided to splurge and go. The pizza was mediocre (but a nice change from rice and instant noodles) but mostly it was just fun talking about our experiences in China so far and being with someone so similar to me. She leaves this Saturday and I am definitely going to miss her and her adorable South Carolinian accent. After dinner we walked down Nanjing Road to the Bund (if you remember, it’s gorgeous at night) and took some pictures and then just sat and people watched. Actually, it was more like people watched us. We sat there and literally everyone who passed would turn and look at us and kind of giggle or start talking to each other and a few of the brave ones would come up and ask us for pictures. This one little girl was the cutest thing ever- we waved at her and then a few minutes later she came running back with another adorable little girl. At the same time they said “Excuse me, can we take a..” and then when they got to the word ‘photo’ one of them messed up and they started giggling and we were so excited to say yes because, hello, these were the cutest little girls ever. So we took several pictures with them and then with their other siblings and family and then pretty much everyone on the Bund wanted a picture with the two white girls. It was pretty funny, and actually sort of fun; we probably took thirty pictures over the course of fifteen minutes or so. Some of them were with young girls who were so thrilled when we agreed to pose with them and some of them were teenage boys (a little more awkward) and then some were forty-fifty year old tourist groups (probably the most awkward). All of them spoke very little English, but told us how beautiful we were and thank you and that kind of thing so we had a good time.