The theme of today is “On the bus- Off the bus”.  Well maybe it is the theme of the trip.  We are a bit tired…and of course everyone has an ache or a pain or a cold.  But we are troopers, the wakeup call comes and we get into routine.  We shower, now let’s digress here for a minute.  It is Sharon’s turn to go first so we read the manual and she goes into the bathroom.  About 20 minutes later she told me she was done.  “But be careful she says.  I decided to wash the bathroom down…not sure how that happened.”  I proceed to enter the bathroom at my own risk, not knowing what I was going to see.  Sharon had turned the dial so that all 3 shower heads were on and not just the floor but the whole bathroom was wet.  I take my shower and Sharon asks, so did you do the same?  To this I quickly replied “No” J. 

 So we go for our usual breakfast and get “On the bus”.

It is a busy day today we are told and we must adhere to the schedule.  First stop is the Jade Budda Temple.  We arrive and can you imagine all our Chinese friends have come with us.  It is packed because today is a religious festival day.  We enter into the square and there are 4 large incense burners.  All all filled to the top with incense.  People are buying them all around us, they light them, then they do their prayer ritual and then throw them into the burners.  There are ashes everywhere.  We proceed to the temple to see the Jade buda.  Guess what….we climb and climb and we arrive.  We are quiet now, or at least I got told to be quiet…Charlie was talking to me and I was just answering.  We say our prayers and exit into ….can you guess….yes another market place.  Here we get separated.  I am approached by a Chinese vendor who asks me to come in and see the Laughing Buda, he brings luck.  I go up the stairs and do as I am told.  I rub his belly three times.  I then decide I had better find the group.  Yes I do know what you are thinking now…I lost Sharon and I am a bad buddy again. It is what it is. 

I meet up with the group, there is Sharon and we get “On the bus”.  Our next stop is the Cashmere factory.  It is already made cashmere clothing.  I am not sure anyone wants to stop here but it is on the revised schedule.  Sharon and I quickly walk thru the place and then get “On the Bus”.  While on the bus we are discussing things we have seen.  Sharon tells me to remind her that she needs to buy “Black”.  I am thinking “what is black?”  Just as I started to ask so did the two ladies in front of us.  What is black they ask?  Sharon said well I did say Black silk.  Well she did not so we have all decided she is now speaking Chinese English too.  We had the best laugh of the day.

Next stop is the Arts and Crafts Center; everyone is excited about visiting this place.  But what a letdown it was.  Guess what we got “off the bus”, climbed the steps, went down the steps and here we were in a very small museum.  It had some interesting art work and pottery.   The lower level had some things for sale but nothing that moved us.  Back “0n the bus”.

We are now in the Pudong district which is most prominent for the financial center in what they call the new China.  Here we proceed to dinner.  We climb up to the 2^nd floor; did I tell you every time we eat it’s on the second floor?  We have dinner and tonight there are a lot of heads on the table, fish heads I mean.  Needless to say we ate our staple, rice and watermelon.  We have only 40 minutes to eat, it’s ok for us.  Now we get “on the bus” and drive to see an Acrobatic show.

The show is quite amusing, some professional acts and some filler acts.  We had people that could move their bodies in ways that I will leave to your imagination.  We had a magician doing card tricks, a knife thrower who cheated and then to end the show we had a young man stack 8 chairs up to the sky and then proceed to do handstands…I was not really in the mood to see blood but he amazed us all.  No safety net, nothing if he fell he was a goner…back “on the bus” and off to our hotel.  It was a very busy day.  We didn’t have to climb our 77 floors but here we are as close to god as we can get without really crossing the line…