こんばんは。How’s it going?

Today our China tour comes to an end, with our scheduled departure from Shanghai at 2pm. But that gives us the morning in the city! So, we start with breakfast at the hotel, which has a wonderful buffet. I have been eating small breakfasts of coffee, juk (rice porridge) with pickles, and maybe a dumpling or two. But today I “splurged” and had some beef noodle soup. It was delicious!

Oh, by the way, the hotel has this display which shows the current air pollution level in the city, and the air quality inside the hotel. Pretty cool, but also kind of sad that it is needed. Speaking of the notorious air-quality in China, I don’t think it has been that bad. Perhaps it’s been due to the time of year (winter is supposed to be the worst for air pollution), but even though it is relatively good, blue skies were rare.

I still needed to do some shopping, so my brother and I headed to the nearby grocery store to stock up on goodies, including Japanese Kewpie in Chinese containers, some hotpot mix, spicy fish mix, durian candy, chocolate, noodle snacks, and curry. A pretty decent haul. I can’t wait to try the hotpot later.

After saying goodbye to most of our tour group who were on an earlier flight, we waited for our own motor coach to take us to the airport. By the way, I’ve been to eight different airports during this trip: Austin, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Beijing, Xi’an, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Shanghai.

The long flight was without incident and we arrived at my parents’ house in Torrance at around 5 pm the same day we left. Pretty cool traveling across the international date line from west to east!

For dinner, we decided to get Mexican food at a nearby restaurant that we hadn’t been to in a few years: Alfredo’s. The deluxe carnitas burrito I had really hit the spot! I’ll indulge in a huge meal before returning to my smaller portions again.

I technically have one more day of vacation (a travel day) but since I’m no longer in China, I consider my trip over. Very sad…

またね～

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