Sophie's China Journal!

 

Friday, May 21,

We have been in China for a week and a bit more, I think... I am barely keeping track of what day it is! I've been especially homesick this week, and I also was looking at pictures of places we've been to so far. Then I found a picture of ESSUAVE! I miss Essuave so much. I miss Tiko, and Taz, and Laddie, and Coco, and Pepe, and Oliver, I even miss my FISH!!! I have been neglecting my picture pages lately, I really need to work on those... I think I'm going to make a picture page of my pets. Or at least I'll TRY. So far in China I have been to the Bund, the Pearl Tower, the Aquarium, the museum, and the local "Mr. Donut". People here are very surprised that we have 4 kids in our family and they think we're rich. The Chinese people here are very friendly. They come up to you on the street and talk to you. We were looking around one day and we took the subway home, and a woman on the subway with us was guessing the ages of the 3 of us that were there (James stayed home). She guessed Valerie and Alex's ages correctly, but she guessed that I was 15! People have also come up to me and asked to take pictures with me because they thought I was pretty! My hair is getting long and now I usually wear it up in a ponytail. Whenever I look at pictures of me, I realize that I really can't smile when I'm not actually happy. I always look just weird whenever someone takes my picture. I normally don't like taking pictures of people, I like taking pictures of animals, or places. I'll talk about the places I've been later, I can't think right now. I'll work on pictures.

Saturday, May 22,

Now I feel like talking about where we've been. So, we went to the Pearl Tower which our family calls the "Ruby Laser". Because it looks like a LASER! Look at the pictures in China we have so far. It was fun going up there, but I like the Eiffel Tower better. Plus the Eiffel Tower had an AWESOME waffle stand outside of it... We went to the Shanghai museum and saw a Cartier Jewelry exhibit. It was REALLY cool! It had a bunch of cool stuff! I'm so used to not seeing expensive jewelry and seeing just elegant little diamond rings! (Which ARE expensive too, but not like $1,000,000,000,000) We saw a necklace which I wouldn't like wearing, because I don't like Hugely Flashy things. But it was a necklace that had it's neckband made entirely out of gold, with diamonds on it, but here's the AMAZING part.... The Center of the necklace was two emeralds, not two regular emeralds, but two 50 CARAT EMERALDS!!!!!!!!!! And there was a bunch of other stuff like that!! but it was hard to see everything... all the Chinese people were so close to the glass that it seemed like they thought that if they got close enough, they could go through the glass. But it was awesome anyway. We went to the Aquarium, and saw Chinese Alligators (I LOVE reptiles....) A Japanese Humongo Newt (which can get about as long as I am tall), Seals, Penguins, Sharks, and all that jazz. The aquarium was supposed to have the longest Shark walk in the world... But it wasn't really a shark walk.. You only saw sharks in part of it. The Walk was mostly just fish. We went to the gift shop and got some really cool Pillows. (like the travel kind you might find at Brookstone) The Pillows were shaped like Stars, Dolphins, penguins, and seals. I got a Blue penguin one and Valerie got a Yellow Star one. We also got those cool Sea cucumber toys that slip through your hands. Those are pretty much my Highlights for the past week and then some.