You can take the girl out of North Dakota...

...but you sure can't take the North Dakota out of the girl! I'm beginning to have a whole new outlook on why people from out of state ask everyone, "HOW CAN YOU LIVE HERE?!?" when it's 30 below outside, because it's the same astonished face I have when it's 30 above Celcius with 99% humidity here! Born and bred in Larimore...I am not built for a warm climate! Elizabeth is from Hillsboro, so we're both suffering together. Earlier today, we were debating if it were better to be extremely hot or extremely cold...we didn't come up with a clear winner, but we decided that at least we knew how to deal with the cold. Stepping outside and immediately sweating is something new to us. It makes us want to stay in the comfort and air conditioning of our room. Which we did for most of today. We decided today could be our lazy day after everything we did yesterday. Which brings me to...

Yesterday: (where else?) We (Elizabeth, our teacher Greg Patton, and I) took a long taxi (94 yuan...about $12...which is an expensive ride) to the Shanghai Zoo. We all really wanted to see a panda. After almost getting killed three times on the way there, we made it unscathed. Relax Grandma, they were only near deaths... ;) We saw all sorts of animals at the zoo...ostriches, other birds, flamingos, they actually had a lake called 'Swan Lake' and there were tons of swans, geese, and pelicans on it, lions and tigers and bears, oh my!, giraffes, hippos, (although all we saw was his nose because he did not want to get out of the water) deer, zebras, elephants, and finally....PANDAS! We saw one giant panda who was born in 1980, so he was pretty old. I got a great video of him splashing around in his pool. He was surprisingly active while we were there, which was great! Pandas generally spend almost half their time sleeping, the other half eating, and about 2% of their time playing...so we timed it juuuuuust right! We also saw some cute red pandas which actually look like raccoons. They are small and have long bushy tails.

After the zoo, we hopped a taxi over to Jing'an temple, but didn't go in. We were starving and our teacher really wanted some American food. So we went to an Irish pub called Malone's and had a really great hamburger. Not quite the same calibur as Dad used to make, but still good. Mine had mozzerella and pineapple on it...I recommend the combination! Next, we hopped the subway to the Bund and bought tickets for a river boat cruise. When we arrived at what we thought was the place to load the boat, we weren't really sure what to do. We weren't 100% sure this was the place or what our boat looked like or anything. Our boat was supposed to leave at 8:30. At about 7:50, a boat pulled up to the dock. It looked nothing like what we were told it should look like, but we went through the line anyway. The lady taking tickets ripped ours, looked at it again, but let us go through. When we got on the boat, it was very small and fairly crowded. We also thought we were boarding awfully early. We tried to communicate this to one of the workers. Finally, we pointed at the time on our ticket and somebody realized we were on the wrong boat. So they told us to hurry and get off and then made us wait for the next one. Thank goodness we did! The next boat that pulled up was more like the one we expected. It was enormous! There were about 5 floors that I could see, and I'm sure there were more than that. It was so big you couldn't feel it rocking, unlike the other boat. We had a great time and saw some really cool views of Shanghai and Pudong at night. After that, we took the bus back home and called it a night.