Day 40: February 12, 2013 Just My Cup of Tea

     Breakfast was far from disappointing. It was another huge buffet and I had some fruit, toast, pastries, and a ton of cereal. Satisfied, we all headed down to the bus, which first took us to a cruise on West Lake. 

          It was a very foggy day, but it actually made the whole scene very tranquil and looked really cool. There were a ton of surrounding mountains topped with pagodas and just a lot of beautiful views. After some exploring on the bow and the top deck, the 30 minutes were already up and it was time to move on. 

     We walked around a pretty scenic area and then made our way to another pagoda. This pagoda was called the Six Harmonies Pagoda and we managed to make it all the way to the top for an amazing view. The architecture of the inside was really pretty and the doorways were made perfectly for my height, which wasn’t so nice for everyone else. 

     After a long walk down, we met up with the group and headed to the Longjing tea place to taste test tea. They taught us some tea traditions and then let us all try some of their famous green tea that they refuse to export. We first got to try the tea by just eating it and then they filled our cups with water and gave us some orange peels to add in for some more flavor. The coolest thing, I thought, was when they did a demonstration of how green tea releases antioxidants and changed the color of this liquid from black to clear, killing all of the toxins. John and I decided to go in on buying some tea together to bring home for our friends and family. Between the 2 of us we got 1500 cups of some of the best tea in China in just 2 little containers and under $50! 

Tea class

     From there we went to lunch, which was once again a great meal and then headed back to Shanghai. After a couple of hours on the bus, we were back to the hotel and had some serious packing to do. We all packed our bags for our 9-day trip ahead and then packed up our entire rooms so that our roommates can move our stuff to the new campus while we are gone. We took a break for dinner, but unfortunately there is still nothing open due to the New Year so we ended up at KFC. After dinner I finished packing, figured out some more trip details, and did some blogging and responding to emails before I am unreachable for 9 days.