Chinese New Year Aftermath

The boys still had some firecrackers left, so they took some cardboard vehicles they had from the night before and strategically placed explosives to blow them to smithereens!

Peter and his first lighter.  I'm so proud :).  Jack (right) is lighting several firecrackers at once for maximum scare factor (of his parents, that is!)


The boys lit off a string of about 5,000 firecrackers in this giant snowball they found.  Fun times!


More blowing up of a cardboard "U.F.O."


After the firecrackers were used up, we went down to Sue's parents' hotel and picked them up for the drive back to the Shanghai Pudong airport.

This AM, they caught their plane from Shanghai for their flight back to the U.S.  We made our way to the MAGLEV train which runs from Pudong airport into Shanghai.  The MAGLEV "MAGnetic LEVitation" train is incredibly fast, traveling 30 kilometers in about 7 minutes.  Our top speed on the train was about 210 miles per hour - we all gawked out the window as the landscape sped by.  From there, we made our way by taxi to the Shanghai South train station, and then hopped the train back to Hangzhou.

We were also impressed by the immediate cleanup of the city after thousands upon thousands of fireworks displays had been fired.  There is almost no evidence.  Indeed the big box that we fired off (see previous blog) was picked up no more than 10 minutes after we had fired it off by a road crew.  The debris from pile from the 50,000+ strings of fireworks we lit is completely gone!

Now that Thailand and Sue's parents' visit is in the past we have another two weeks of unplanned time before the next semester resumes.  Hopefully the weather will get better soon and we'll be able to get outside more!