Awesome Day! Dead Camera!!

So I had an amazing day yesterday, and I wasn't able to record any of it!

Yesterday I decided to go to the Science and Technology Museum and see what all this hype is about. I grab my camera from my desk just in case there are some photo opps and the battery seems to be working fine at my apartment. After awkwardly ordering one general admission ticket in Chinese and getting inside, there are so many awesome things to take pictures of I was worried about filling up my 8GB card. That's a lot of pictures, I know. So when I turn on my camera to take a picture of a Robot man playing the piano, THE CAMERA DIES!!! Then to top it all off, after the museum my one friend called me asking if I wanted to go to Old-Town. Old town is a section of Shanghai where all the building are from before Shanghai started to get modernize itself and they all still look like stereotypical Chinese houses with the curved roofs. I'll show you a picture...oh wait...MY CAMERA DIED!!! Old town is littered with thousands of tiny shops where you bargain the little old ladies down to 1/5 of their asking price. I've never had so much fun haggling for stuff that I have no intention of buying. i.e. I haggled a giant 500 lbs rose quartz sphere down from 10,000 Quai, to 2,000 Quai. Just getting the practice in.

I'll definitely be going back to both of those places to take pictures and just because they were both amazing places to spend the day.

Since I didn't take any pictures. But here is a list of mental snapshots that I took of some of the cooler things I saw in the museum

1. I crossed a thin bamboo bridge over an artificial rainforest.
2. I wandered through an actual batcave.
3. There was a stone forest filled with giant insects
4. I got to see what germs looked like if they were the size of your dog
5. People were allowed to ride a bike on a tight rope.
6. I went into a haunted mansion wearing these headphones that demonstrated how scary dolby surround sound really is.
7. There was an arachnid room filled with giant 50 foot spider replicas. Felt like I was in Harry Potter.
8. They had lifelike human robots doing some of the coolest things. They could....
a. ...beat you in an archery contest
b. ...play any sheet music on the piano that you put in front of them
c. ...paint a caricature of yourself
d. ...play five people in majong at the same time and win
e. ...identify any object from the smell that you hold under its nose.
9. You could bike or fly in a virtual reality room. (I would have done this but the line was way too long)


Things I've learned today...

1. Cards are a spectator sport. Two people will play in the street and all of the sudden, 30 people will be around them watching.
2. Everyone loves to squat here. People would rather squat than sit down. I blame it on the in-ground toilets.
3. I found the cloth market and I can get a custom-made suit form only about $95.00.
4. Always charge your camera before going anywhere :-(
5. I want a musical, archery, painting robot.

Love,
Ezra