A quick trip to Hangzhou!!!

Last weekend, we left Tim at home and went to a small town of 6 million or so people. We have some other Olmsted friends there and stayed with them for the weekend. Josie had never been there and it is so different from Shanghai. The first train we could take for Friday evening was the 7:30. I thought that is perfect, it is an hour and fifteen minute train ride, we will arrive just in time to put the kids to bed. But I forgot a few things about traveling around here. We had a pack n play, one stroller, 1 diaper bag, 1 hiking back pack with our clothes, 2 small kids, 1 pregnant lady, and 1 helpful sister. We opted not to take a taxi to the train station. We didn't know how long it would take in traffic (over 1 hour) and Tally gets very grumpy. So we decided to take the metro that has lots of going up escalators, but very few going down ones. Take the DC metro at rush hour and double the amount of people that will cram into one car. Plus don't forget to add that they think mostly think of only themselves and are completely impatient. It doesn't matter that they just came down the escalator and 400 other people are in front of them, they will push to the front of the line and try to get on the train.

So I forgot about all this and not only is it completely crammed, but we have all our junk too. I thought we would never make it! People are cutting us off (even though there isn't any room in front of us, not only to get ahead, but to see what the kids look like and smile at them. I only yelled in English a few times and only rammed/ran over a couple of people with stroller. I may of elbowed a few people too, but I can't quite remember. Anyways just when I thought these people couldn't get any ruder, a few polite ones came out of nowhere, and I had to apologize in my head for wanting to dislike them all. We arrived in time to catch our train and we enjoyed a fun weekend with our friends and seeing Hanzhou.