The first cool thing was visiting the Shanghai World Expo. It was really neat to see all of the pavilions. We got into a bunch of them, but they were mainly the countries that weren’t too popular including Nepal, Morocco, and North Korea. All of the popular countries had really, really long lines and we decided that waiting for three hours to get into just one pavilion just wasn’t worth it. Either way, it was a fun day, if you don’t take into account the cold and rainy weather!
China Pavilion
UK Pavilion
Morocco Pavilion
The second fun thing we did was to check out some of the big buildings that make up the Shanghai cityscape. We went up the tallest one, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and got to check out the city view from the top. It was way cool seeing the elevator go up to the 100th floor, which is at about 492 meters!
View
Top down
Happy Birthday!
A final new experience we had was something called cupping. Matt and I decided to try this traditional Chinese massage for fun without really knowing that much about it. Wikipedia says that cupping is when a cup is applied to the skin and the pressure in the cup is reduced by fire so that the skin is drawn into and held in the cup. Essentially, the masseuse took a cup, put a lighter in it to get out all the oxygen, and then placed it on our backs. This happened not just once or twice but several times until there were cups all over our backs. Then the nasty part happened which involved our skin getting suctioned into the cups and turning nasty shades of red. It was NOT so fun and actually quite painful. After about 30 minutes, the cups were taken off and then we were left with nasty red rings for the next week!
Before After
Overall we had a wonderful time. It was especially great as we were able to celebrate Matt’s 33rd birthday with friends and with new experiences.
wo! Cupping made your backs really red!! That's really surprising to me. The Chinese have their ways though, don't they. =) Stickin needles in ya and all sorts of things. Glad you guys had a good time for both of your birthdays!
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