Our Pearl Jumping at the Pearl

     Zeta, our guide greeted Lia this morning with a Dragon Boat Festival souvenir. It’s a little mini lantern that says Congratulations and Good Health. Lia is quite taken with Zeta. We then went to the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower. It was misting out, since it is a rainy season right now. The tower has 3 red balls that you can go up to. At the 2nd ball, which is 259 meters up (750 feet), there is a glass floor that you can walk on. I really am pretty good about heights, but to walk on a transparent floor is really quite scary. I remember taking a psychology class and learning about babies crawling on glass. It was an experiment to see how babies would handle a glass floor that was perceptively dangerous. The babies didn’t have any fear yet, or maybe their perception was not developmentally there yet. Not sure when the fear sets in, or should I say common sense sets in...But Lia went out on it and starting jumping...eiy yie yie. Jumping. Not walking. Not crawling. Yes, jumping.

    

     I went out on my 4 limbs. I had to crawl. People were walking on it very easily. Some were doing great photo shoots; lying on their backs, in a pose of pretend fear. I finally got to that point of being goofy. Not “goofy challenging”, but “goofy take the picture fast please”. It was hard to look down or walk off of it. Crawling would suffice, but I managed to boldly walk off and kept my dignity. We walked around the observation floor and found where where Jiangxi, Nanchang is located. Of course we were very happy to take a serious photo, since that’s where we adopted Lia. We were filled with great memories. The Shanghai skyline is very beautiful.

     We then went to the Jade Buddha Temple. People were burning incense, praying, singing, and bowing to the North, South, East and West Gods. Surrounding the temples were many beautiful lanterns with red ribbons tied onto them. Where the reclining Buddha was, we found a calligrapher who painted Rosie’s name on a scroll. We chose to have him write what we hope for Rosie. He wrote happiness, good health, smiles every day, and smart. Lia has a simular scroll that we had bought in Nanchang.

     Since we were then quite hungry, we went out to a restaurant close to the hotel. After we ordered, the waiter brought something totally different than what we had expected. It ended up to be pretty good, and Lia ate a lot of it. The other entree was absolutely horrible. To me, it seemed as if it was a cow’s tongue. Not that I ever ate a tongue, but it sure seemed to have a very odd and tough texture, and the flavor was not appealing. Keith and I reminisced about Nanchang. Whenever we went out of the hotel to eat, it was so appealing, and we enjoyed the food tremendously. We need to find our niche, and fast! We’re not MacDonald’s people but yet we don’t want to eat pigeon or shark (which was actually on the menu). I’ve been really enjoying my traditional pot of Jasmine tea though.

     Tomorrow we will be going to the Asian City of Suzhou.