Katie:

Hi all, arrived in Shanghai yesterday at 8.15am local time and were really jet lagged as it was around 1am London time. We got a taxi from the airport to the hotel which was an experience...! The driver was pleasant but they do drive quite madly here..! Arrived at the hotel and were pleasantly suprised with the quality of the hotel, was really nice and clean with a good size room.

We unpacked a bit and decided to hit the streets, which were busier and hotter than I think we expected, I have never seen so many people waiting to the cross the road at once. The people all seem really nice although the language barrier is proving to be a little bit difficult but we are picking up the odd word here and there.

Took a walk to see The Bund yesterday which is a bit like a Chinese version of Canary Wharf and also went to see The People's Statue where we met an aspiring Chinese painter & I had my photo taken with him. In the evening we went out for our first Chinese meal, I used chop sticks for the first time ever...had a few locals looking at me funny but managed it in the end, the food was good & tastier than I expected.

 Today we have just taken a walk to the French Concession of Shanghai where there are loads of huge shopping centres with lots of designer and even a few British High Street shops..(they even have a nine west & Oasis so I was very happy). I have been quite good and haven't bought anything yet although Arber is being very patient with me as I still like to have a good look round...! Found a Superman shop which sold Superman branded clothes so I think Arber was happy! We also took the Metro for the first time which was cool.

We meet the other members of the group tomorow as we begin our tour will add more stuff as it happens...

Sorry there are no photos yet didn't realise we would find Shanghai Library today which is where we are using the internet so didn't bring the cables to connect the camera to the computer. Will put them up next time x

 Arber:

Disclaimer:

ok lets face it, she writes a far more detailed account of our trip so if your gonna read my section i can only offer your the oddities of journey - at the cost of having to read my spelling!!!- all in all if this was a dvd katies would be tha main features and i would be the the deleted scenes!! -

I never realised that a long haul journey could be sooo much fun - from really good in flight films, a sweet seat - seat 21AB on a 777 comes highly recomended - and to be honest not bad food considering its 3500ft in the air. Sleeping on the other hand is less enjoyable katie managed a few hours i managed about half that a fact i regret to now as im sooo tired!! - when we got off the plane it was 8am so not too busy katie managed to take both our bags of the belt -combined weight of 34 KG by herself while i skipped off to the little boys room and we found a taxi easy enough katie says he drove madly i would say that he played GTA one too many times and the fact he had the nails of big cat was scary as hell - the hotel is nice except i cant raise my arms over my head in the shower as the celing is soo dam low. this place is cool as hell though every street looks like a manga im sure i have read and the people apart from selling you fake gucci have all been really pleasant. we watched shirt painting in the mall, ate questionable meat in a noodle bar and realised there is a mutal direspect between traffic code and the chinese people. ohh yeh and the chinese painter was not nice he was creepy and just tried to sell us stuff katie is being well too polite any longer in that circular gallery and we may never have come out!!!

Hopefully we will be able to update our blog soon with some photos, we both hope all of you are well & it would be lovely to hear from you so please send us lots of emails xxxx