Foghorns and Floating in a Cloud

Forecast: Foghorns and Floating in a Cloud

Cruise Day 3:

After leaving the Taiwan Strait will continue on a northeasterly course in East China Sea. Early this morning ship picked up our pilot and under his advice will commence a 5 hour passage on the Chain Jiang and Huangpu Rivers towards Shanghai.

Please don’t send or forward any junk mail or group mailings to the Gates or Hicks emails for the next two weeks. Only send short personal ones as we are on ship internet and it is slow as dialup at .40-.70 cents a minute, so just to load, open, read, and delete an email can easily cost $3-4. For your emails I pre-write in Word then hurry and just cut, paste, and send so I don’t use the time on the internet.

Today seems more the day of rest than yesterday, as there was so much to do yesterday. But we did stay away from the dancing and swimming activities. Just attended the Educational ones and the musical show last night.

Today we decided to REST up for the next two days in Shanghai. There is a small chance Kriss is going to get off the ship early to try to find us cheap flights to Xion to see the Terracotta Warriors (Stripling Warriors to Ed). Frommer’s said that it is cheaper to just find street vendors to get them from. But it is a two-hour flight to and from Shanghai so if we really try this it is like being in LA and flying to see the SLC Temple then back again the same day. But Kriss and Ed fly like that all the time so doesn’t seem like an unthinkable trip….other than the cost as they don’t fly free here. So if you don’t hear from us tomorrow probably means we found a flight within our budget.

I woke at 4 AM and stayed awake as the foghorn blasted about every 5 minutes. Actually it was a bit mysterious and romantic in a weird way. Visions of old movies and lighthouses and ships kept coming to mind. And it was also very rough sailing with the rocking and rolling of the ship side to side. I felt like someone had been rocking me in a cradle all night and I wanted them to stop! Ed was grateful for his seasick wristbands but still was scared Gpa would fall out of bed in his sleep. Kriss and Gpa loved it and slept “like a baby”.

Finally I just opened my book and started reading til Kriss and Ed and Dad got up at about 6:00. We all changed in to exercise clothes and headed to the Promenade Deck and did our laps. We feel we deserved some extra milage for the extra steps we took just trying to walk in a straight line with the heavy rocking of the ship. We all looked like a bunch of drunks that had stayed up drinking all night. It was pretty funny to watch us.

The Explorations Speaker Series topic today was “Japan, China, and the West: War and Conflict. Again another great lecture on the history of the locations we are visiting. Really helps put it all together when we are actually seeing it and not just reading it in a history book.

In a few minutes we are being called down floor by floor to meet face to face the Chinese government that came about in Hong Kong so they could personally meet each one of us before we are allowed off the ship in their country tomorrow morning. (I think kind of like going through Customs, checking our passports and visa’s but faster so they don’t have to do it each time we get off the next 3 ports of call in China.)

Wish we could send some pictures to go with our experiences but they told us we can’t from ship internet as it will not handle large files but we will try to send some from an internet café tomorrow if we find one.

Better go meet the Chinese government.

Love,

Pam, Dad/Gpa, Ed and Kriss