Final days...

Well, we finally made it out of Siyang. However, getting to Shanghai was quite the adventure, shocking, I know. We got ourselves up at 6am to be ready to leave for the bus at 6:30. Mr. Xu was late picking us up, and when he took us to where the bus was supposed to leave from, it turned out the first departure was 8am. Sweet. Also, we wanted to be dropped off closer to our destination, so we had to have like 15 men crowd around a map and first of all try and tell us that where we wanted to go was on the complete other side of the city than it actually was, and then when they finally had it right, there ware like 5 different places they could drop us. After much debate and location was decided on, and we climbed aboard. The bus left around 8:10am, and we figured we'd arrive around 2pm, six hours later. HA. Finally, about 8 hours after we left and a million and a half stops to let other passengers off, we got to our stop, put all of our luggage into a taxi and spent 30RMB on the cab ride that would "cost no more than 20RMB" we got to our friends apartment and headed off to Starbucks for some sanity and catching up. That night involved and lot of wine and Papa John's pizza, and was an overall success with completely avoiding being in China, and celebrating our last few days in the PRC. On Friday we went to Starbucks again, and heading out to do some shopping, both at the Super Brand Mall, and the Pearl City bargaining market. I was able to pick up some last minute things to bring home so that was good. Friday night we went to dinner at an awesome Mexican place and then headed out on the town for some drinks...we were planning to be home around 12 so we could get up and head to the museum early, but when 3am rolled around, we finally wandered back to the apartment. We still made it to the museum on Saturday, but just decided to go to a 50's style diner for dinner and to watch a movie, considering we had to travel the next day. (We watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie, I thought it was pretty good)

This morning we got up around 7 to get our things packed and head to the airport. We said our final goodbyes to Christine, who is heading back up to Funing, at least for a little while, and then took a super quick cab to Hongqiao airport. Laura and I had different carriers so we made some quick plans on how we would try to meet up, and headed off to check-in for our flights, as well as pay our overweight luggage fees. We knew it would happen, domestic flights only allow up to 20kg total checked luggage. Oh well. After that was all taken care of we both had our flights, with not so fantastic lunches, and we met at the baggage claim in Shenzhen. It was super easy to find a bus over to Hong Kong and all was going well, clearing customs and whatnot, until we got to "our stop" only to realize that they guy who told us to get off was wrong, and we were not where we wanted to be, with a ridiculous amount of luggage. We finally asked around and a worker there told us a cab would be the cheapest and he hailed one for us. When we got in we tried to tell the driver where to go, but he just busted out his mobile, someone picked up and he handed the phone to me. The voice on the other end asked me in English where I wanted to go, I told him, handed the phone back and poof! we arrived at our hostel. We checked in and got to our cell...literally like 6ftx10ft. Saying rooms in HK are small is the biggest understatement of the year. But we made it, and we were both able to take hot showers and clean up a bit before we planned to meet up with a girl who lives here and is friends with someone I know back home.

We met up with Elizabeth at a metro stop near our place and we walked over to an Irish Pub for some beers before heading down to Victoria Harbor for the light show.
****I should mention that the whole time we've been here, I feel like I've been in New York. There's so many Westerners and everyone speaks English, and everything is just big, and busy, and I absolutely love it. The people are really helpful, both at our hostel, and even just on the street if you need a little direction. It is a little funny thought, because everyone seems to default to English on the street. I saw a man that looked maybe Indian, speaking on his cell phone in not English, and he ran into a Chinese guy and said "Sorry!" Welcome back to diversity! YAY!***** After the light show we took the ferry across to Hong Kong Island, and ElizaB took us to an AMAZING Indian restaurant where we had soup, salad, curry, nan, and some other things for about 13USD. It was awesome. She also gave us a quick tutorial on the MTR (metro) here and how to get over to see the Big Buddha tomorrow. She was so nice and helpful, and curious to hear about our time in the PRC, it was a really nice night.

I'm so excited to do some touring tomorrow, but mostly I know I'll be excited to get my things completely together, and get to bed because Tuesday morning we'll be leaving for the airport at about 5:30am. My computer is about dead and I don't have a HK adapter, so I think this is my final sign-off from the Far East...It's been a trip everyone, but all things do come to an end...I'm so excited...I'm almost home!