Shanghai'd

Hello everyone!
I would apologize for my one week absence but my lack of posting was a result of China blocking access to many social media sites, including my blog. Nevertheless, I had the most amazing time-- I feel like I will only be able to share a tiny fraction of the experiences that I enjoyed over the past seven days. As I'm currently in Singapore enjoying the hospitality of my aunt and grandmother, I perceive it's now time to finally post some material from my Chinese adventures. The best place to start is always at the beginning so this first post is from the first day at the very first stop in Shanghai.
After our direct flight to Shanghai, which was a hefty eleven hours, we arrived at Pudong International Airport at the ungodly hour of 3:45 am. It was then when my mom deigned to tell us that we would need to wait until 9 am for our tour guide to pick us up (wifi-less); ultimately, we ended up waiting a total of six sweaty hours until we were driven to our hotel. However, all was forgiven when we were finally reunited with wifi and ate a delicious buffet dinner at the hotel.

The next day we began our actual tour with a few stops around Shanghai before we headed to the next city of Hangzhou. At this point, we didn't know anyone from our tour and were just randomly taking pictures by ourselves. However, by the end of the tour, we became really close with several of our tourmates (whom I'll miss dearly)! It was really fun to meet individuals from different parts of the world; for instance, I got to learn a bit about what it's like to live in Australia, New Jersey, and France ("mozzies" means mosquitoes and "twelvies" is the Aussie equivalent to the Vancouver "LG" and "LB"). I also watched various animated movies and romantic-comedies with a certain pair of awesome Aussie siblings almost every night-- definitely a fun way to end a long day of sightseeing.

Since I don't speak Mandarin, the tour mostly consisted of finding people to translate what the tour guide was saying and wondering what the heck we were doing next. Despite all of the confusion, I truly enjoyed myself as we visited many beautiful historic sites that were hundreds to thousands of years old.

Necklace, Top, Shorts // H&M

Shoes // Urban Outfitters

Sunglasses // Aldo

Bag // Tory Burch

I hope you are all enjoying your summer (unless you're currently experiencing winter in places like Australia) and are out doing new and fun things as well!