A Spiritual Shanghai

When we heard that our church was having a district conference in Shanghai we immediately jumped on the opportunity. We started planning and after many failed attempts finally got tickets purchased and a hostel booked. We set out Friday after school and survived the K train. K trains are the worst. In fact I am sitting on one right now. They are slow, they smell, and they are hot. People and smashed in and EW. It is not a pleasant experience. People smoke and right now there is the most annoying music ever. The good? It's only 49 yuan which is $8. Sweet. So how do you entertain yourself for four hours? MASH, cootie catchers and stories. Get this in MASH I live in a shack in provo. I drive an old beater truck to my job at Walmart where I am a greeter. I have a pet cow and six kids who I support on welfare. The good? I'm married to Damon. If you don't know who Damon is then you don't watch vampire diaries obviously. Anyway When we got off the train we booked it to the metro because it was 10:40 and the metro stopped running at 11. Problem was we got on yellow and we needed to be on purple. By the time we realized and got off we missed the last one. Thus we had to pay to take a taxi. I was cranky AF and needed to sleep. We didn't get to the hostel til midnight. 

The next day the church had organized tours for all us younger people. We got In a group and headed out with our guide Sunny. She took us all over. We went to people's square, a beautiful garden, nanjing east street, the bund, a ferry across the bund, and more. It was a really fast tour but awesome because it gave us ideas of what to do when we come back.

After the tour we high failed it to the teachnology and science stop which is full of shopping. Of course I bought too muh but this time I put myself on a budget and stayed in it. Finds included lulu lemon headbands and sports bras, Rosetta Stone spanish, a Zara sweater and toms. From there we headed to the afternoon session of our conference. It was a very uplifting conference. I felt inspired to get home and get back into volunteer work, to focus on serving one another and a renewed effort to keep positive and enjoy life and help others to enjoy life as well.

Oh! On our tour we went to this park. I kid you not it was a park where parents put advertisements on the walls for their kids. Like their kids who are not married. They list he year born, the height, the salary and what they are looking for. Part of the park had the parents sitting there holding signs. I died bc I can see my parents doing that or going together to shop for a husband. 

That night we went back to the church for a dance which was great because cookies were involved. I will tell you though for the last three weeks I have been working on 7 servings of veggies a day and 8+ glasses of water. Then saturday I had no veggies and hardly any water and let me tell you my body was NOT happy with me. It's amazing the difference. 

Sunday session was equally awesome. I felt really touched on Sunday about slowing down and enjoying the journey. To live and love life. To help others and serve everyday. To put down the phone, get out of the virtual world and live in the actual world. Church was really great this weekend.