After our two-day trip we decided that going to Peking with ToddlerJi was a very stupid idea. We can go another time when she is a little older: it was just not fair to her to drag her all the way there.

Instead we made ourselves very busy in Shanghai.

The first week of June is called Golden Week in China and in Japan. It is basically a collection of government stat holidays that have been extended to cover the entire week. EVERYONE TRAVELS!!!

It is crazy.

Most businesses are shut down but anything to do with shopping or food is open and packed.

During this week we had the traditional Golden Week family dinner where ToddlerJi was introduced to all her great-aunts and cousins. There is only one other young grandkid in the family, also a girl, so they are spoiled to death special kids. We had this huge dinner in a packed restaurant and everyone ate tons. It was a pretty good dinner.

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(The little boy on the right is not actually family. He was this kid who was running around the restaurant having a great time talking to us and playing with ToddlerJi.)

The other little granddaughter god insanely jealous of ToddlerJi at one point because her mom gave her a big hug and was carrying her around the restaurant. WOO hehe, tears and a temper tantrum. Hehe.

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But here they are getting along just fine.

During this Golden Week Li and I did tons of the shopping that we wanted to do but we left ToddlerJi with Grandma and Grandpa because the crowds were just stupid: a baby stroller was completely impossible and it was hot.

ToddlerJi got spoiled rotten by her grandparents and was fed far too much food on my nono list. I was a good girl and didn’t flip out – too much.

During the week we went to the big Shanghai Museum and went through the entire gallery. We spent almost the whole day there and had a fairly decent lunch in their restaurant.

Not too far from Li’s parents house is the LongHua Temple; this place was packed!! They had some sort of street market going on outside the temple and there were soooo maaannny people!! We bought on of those Buddha meditation bowl thingies where you hold the bowl in your hand and rub this stick around the outside edge. It vibrates and makes this wicked humm noise.

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This temple is famous for its pagoda, which is so old it is closed to all visitors. The entire place was built in 242AD and is quite beautiful.

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This is the huge fire that you can see at every temple for people to light their incense sticks when praying. I became facinated by these fires and took tons of different photos of them.

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