As promised - pictures

Well my computer is playing with me again. This morning it started... I know it just shows how sick it is... hmmm... don't even know if to really be happy about this or not...

Anyway, here's some pics as I promised.

I took the subway to meet Rob's mom in town. It was 8:30am, and everybody was on their way to work. My stop is the 3rd stop of the line going north, and the train was already full when it got there. I squeezed myself in with all the rest of the ppl, telling myself that I only have 4 stops and it's over. Then we stopped in the next stop- and even more ppl came in. Then we stopped in the next one, 2 took off, and 5 got on. I wanted to die... the only thing that relaxed me, wasn't knowing that I only have 2 more stops to go, but was closing my eyes and imagining myself on the wide open beach. Was so claustrophobic. No one could move, everybody was touching everybody, was no air, and was really really hot. I hate it so much that there are so many of them. Everywhere you go there's millions of ppl, being a gentleman here will leave you with nothing, so everyone pushes and behaves like little kids... Since the first time I was in China I realized that the individual Chinese person may be as nice as anyone else in the world- some are great and some are terrible, but in the masses, as a group of a billion gazillion ppl- it's almost impossible to feel good among them.

This is how it looked like when I got off the train. There wasn't even room for air to get on.

After meeting Rob's mom in town we did a walk from her really good book on Shanghai. I love walking in the streets, especially when the weather is nice, coz Shanghai is so huge - you always find new things in it. We were walking in some old streets, that most of the houses there were built in the 1920's, by Expats. These houses were really nice, and here's an example to how some of them look like these days:

Lets hang our laundry outside the lovely house!

Some of the houses are of course renovated and looks like some really important ppl live there (especially coz when Rob's mom asked the guards if we can go look the only thing they said was: "no no no no no no no"). It's really refreshing to see these kind of houses here. We visited Song Ching Ling's Mausoleum, which is in her old residence in Shanghai. She was Sun Yat Sen's wife, he was about 30 years older than her, and they got married in 1915 despite her parents opinion, and despite the fact he had a wife (he just decided he's "letting her go" and got married with Song Ching Ling in Japan). She was a big activist for the New China in the early 1900, and as his wife she met the most influential ppl in the Communist Party in those days. He died after 10 years of marriage, leaving her, a woman in her 30's alnoe. She never remarried, but she kept on meeting some really interesting ppl, including some ppl I wouldn't mind torturing....... The list is long, and it includes the prime ministers of India, Pakistan and North Korea, and a lot of women in international women's organizations. On the one hand this woman was very impressive (in pictures as well) and on the other hand- what would you say about a woman that got the "Stalin Peace Award" and entertained Mao in her living room???

Me next to Song Ching Ling's lawn, where she hosted tea parties... Her house was amazing. I wouldn't have minded living there...

After that we went to the Jade Buddha Temple, and I saw Chinese ppl praying- which was a rare view. Here's a picture that proves I wasn't imagining things:

Remember the Wishing Tree I put a little picture of a while ago? Here's a girl trying to throw a wish on it. I stood there for a while looking at her trying- but after 10 minuets I left. Hope she made it after that...