Shanghai on my own

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to Shanghai all by myself.  I had to go to a conference, and being the
only college counselor, I went alone.  There are several weird things about traveling to a foreign country all by yourself that make it different than traveling with someone else.  First of all, there is no one with you to laugh at all of the silly and different things that you see.  Take for instance this taxi driver, completely encased in a sneeze guard.  Now I was in the back seat cracking up... which I am sure looked like complete insanity to the taxi driver.  But of course, with my limited Chinese (hello, numbers 1-6, menu), I could not tell the driver what was so funny.  Or where I wanted to go.  So, really not so funny.

Another difference is that if you are alone, you are completely reliant on only yourself for directions, and if you know me at all, you know I have ZERO sense of direction.  So many of the pictures that I took were of landmarks that would help me get back home if I got lost.  

Thames Town is a part of Shanghai that looks like England, and it was where I was staying for the conference. 

You really wouldn't guess that this is Shanghai, right? 

During one of our breaks, I had some time to walk around another part of Shanghai, which brings me to the third strange thing about traveling alone.  If you get hurt, or drop dead, or go missing, no one would know.  Probably for a long time.  Especially in China.
Because in China the internet is notoriously bad, and Google (and therefore gmail), and Facebook are blocked, there are very few ways to communicate with people outside of China.  So when I got up in the morning I tried to e-mail Gary and the kids. but most of the time the internet was still spinning and loading hours later.  So really they didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know what they were doing.  Which is fine, really.  Except you start to become hyper aware that you could just vanish in a canal somewhere and really, until you missed the plane, and didn't show up to work, no one would really know that you weren't there.  And so while most likely, and in this case, you will be totally fine, it is just something to think about. 

Luckily I didn't vanish in a canal, but I did buy lots of Chinese candy and goji berries, and made it safely back for the afternoon session.  However, that night, when it came time to go out, I enlisted the company of some friends.  Here they are looking at the map of where we should go, and I am taking a photo of the name, in case I need to get back alone.  

The rest are just random photos of the way there and the way back.  And luckily we stuck together and I didn't need to use the photos.