Posted by Amanda Today was an interesting day. Since I'd planned Hong Kong, Carrie planned Shanghai. We started the day early because I hadn't gotten to go off the ship yet. We had a new person to our usual four of Carrie, Jenne, Noah, and me so it took a bit of getting used to the new dynamics. It also meant getting two cabs much of the time. Our first cab driver either didn't notice or care that we had four in the back seat. He took us to the Bund. Th...

Posted by Amanda Today was a bit of a bust for me. I think Noah will have more interesting things to report as he's waiting on the gangway returning from his Beijing trip. We were supposed to arrive in Shanghai at about 4am with a full face to face check with immigration shortly thereafter. Instead, we got caught in the fog and had to anchor about 66 miles from Shanghai. They had hoped we'd be able to get going again during the night and arrive by 7am. Inst...

Much smaller crowd for Taiji this morning, unsurprisingly, but everyone was on time for the bus to the Great Wall. Once we got there, one student seemed shocked that there would be a lot of stairs to climb.Sshe had been in a car accident and had very bad ankles. The day before, she had told me we were walking too fast for her, so somehow it was my fault that I hadn't reorganized the whole visit to accommodate her -- you know, by going to the small, flat part of...

A late start today. My trip wasn't scheduled to leave until11:00, which was just early enough to prevent us from doing anything productive in the morning. Alas, Amanda is not coming with me on this one. She's already done the Beijing thing and didn't love it so she was happy (ish) to stay behind on the ship and organize activities for the 70-80 people remaining on board. I'm bus leader for this trip, with Carl Shepherd, head of the Field Office, as trip leade...