Our Trip to Church via the Subway

Today we attempted to get to church via the subway. As Tom is still on vacation, this is about our only option to get there, and since we have a carrier now for Josh (Dustin can carry him on his back rather than dragging the stroller up and down numerous flights of stairs--remember no elevators, and hardly any escalators here), we felt we could manage it, or at least attempt it this once.

As the subway station is not really close to our house, we took a taxi to the station, and then the trains (3 different ones) to arrive at the station right by our church. The taxi ride was quite the experience, as he took us through a lot of back roads, and it was great to see more of how the average Chinese person truly lives. It was also quite the experience, as he was a lot more aggressive a driver then we allow Tom (our driver) to be. The taxi did get us there quickly, and we headed down for our first leg of the trip.

We got a lot of stares, for while the toddler carriers are fairly common in the US, at least in parks where you might go hiking, they are a new sight for most Chinese. Josh was quite the hit as usual, as was Danny who could charm them with his ability to speak a little Chinese. They had a few pictures taken as we went along, and overall the trains were fairly easy to manage.

We arrived at church just a little after they began announcements, and quickly got Josh to the nursery. Danny came with us, as he did not have class today due to the holiday. The music was great, but Danny was already tired of standing half way through the songs (I have to admit sometimes I get tired too, as they sing for about 20 minutes straight at our church). With Danny being tired, he was also restless, and this made the service extremely long for me as well.

After church, we headed across the street for some Turkish food. We found this place, when they held the newcomers meeting for church there. The food is good here, but Danny was not really interested in eating.

We headed out back to the subway with two tired boys. While it did seem in some ways to be quicker, in other ways it felt longer because we had two restless boys. We were able to find a taxi fairly quickly from the station (thankgoodness) and another added blessing was the driver knew where our home was located (not always the case in Shanghai). We were home in no time.

So today, we did prove that this was a way we can get to church, yet there are still blessings of going in the car--mostly that the boys are able to sleep on the way home if they want to do so. They are working on extending some of the subway lines, so in the future we will not need to take three different trains. We may try it again at that time. Overall though it was a success and we had a good time on our little adventure out of our comfort zone.