This morning we were all a bit nostalgic as we were packing our bags for China. Luckily, by now we are utterly amazing at packing our bags and boarding and disembarking trains and all other forms of transportation: busses, gondolas, cable cars, and the ferry. Our traveling went well. We encountered some turbulence on the flight, but thankfully no issues of motion sickness.

Before our flight some of us had the pleasure of being treated to some delicious strawberry pastries. The deal was that if we found a particular statute arhat among the other 500 and took a picture with it on Mount Misen, we would be treated to a strawberry shortcake, compliments of our Professor Kopf. Fifteen out of the eighteen completed the challenge and were delighted to eat some delicious pastries this morning.

As we were walking to our hotel, it became clear that this was not going to be anything like Japan. We had to push past people to get off one of the busier trains and as we were walking, we were shocked to hear a man yelling, trying to sell his goods. If we were still in Japan, this man would have been silent and would have just dipped his head as we walked by. When we reached street level, the amount of smog astonished us.

We are now getting tucked into our beds at our hotel, preparing for the Nanjing Massacre museum that we will go to tomorrow.

To all those trying to reach us: Gmail and Facebook are not working because we are in China. There has also been trouble with the Viber app as well, but we think this might be due to the strength of our WiFi on the tenth or eleventh floor, we will try to keep the updates on this rolling in. FaceTime and iMessage do in fact work.