china!

Woohoo! After many hours of attempting to find the best blogging/photo sharing combo for my trip....the winner is....Google (what a surprise). The biggest problem I had was deciphering the Chinese on the Blogger page...for some reason it wouldnt let me switch to English. I had also heard that blogger was being blocked by "The great firewall" so I wouldn't be able to use it. I read that they just recently unblocked it although they seem to strictly monitor people's use. The Shanghai Daily News just reported that a guy here was arrested for posting explicit stories .

I have run into a few websites that just seem to have "disappeared" since arriving in China, including Google's cache.


I guess I will try to recap everything from the last two days, although I don't want to write a play by play book.

The 8 hour flight from Honolulu to Tokyo wasn't too bad. There were only two other whities on the 747 with 400 some Japanese tourists. I sat next to a nice guy from the Indonesian army who was in Hawaii for a conference. I asked him about the tsunami and if they had installed any warning systems since then, and sure enough that was what the conference was for. I had seen the warning systems in place all around Hawaii, but it may be a little harder to implement in Indonesia because they have a few more islands - about 70,000 more. Sometimes it can take 3 months to reach one by sea! He highly recommended a visit - I'll add that one to the list.

Tokyo Narita is an awesome airport. It has to be brand new. The whole design seemed very efficient and smart - motion activated moving walkways, informative displays, an automated flight announcement system, and clocks everywhere. I watched a Japanese baseball game in the lounge while I surfed the net complements of the NWA worldclub :-). Mom and dad were suprised to hear from me when I called at 5 am. Sorry guys!
I met a marketing professor from Arkansas Tech while I was eating my lunch. He was on his way to Beijing for a conference but had been to Shanghai before. I mentioned I was reading The World is Flat, which he happened to make his class read last semester.
I passed out for the whole flight to Shanghai and missed my gourmet airline dinner. Boy did my neck hurt after that. We rolled into the gate of the massive brand new Pu Dong international airport and deplaned at about 9:30 pm. After I walked through customs I started to worry since I had no idea how I was going to get to the hotel. I could probably just show a cabbie the address right? Luckily there were some volunteers holding a sign with my name on it and a Georgia Tech flag. Phew!
I met my first study-abroad-mate, Tanner at the airport who had just arrived from Korea. Another girl showed up and we all took an hour bus ride into the city. The volunteers were SO incredibly generous with their help, pushing to carry my luggage. One guy even helped me put my backpack on! We made it to the hotel after a quick cab ride from the bus stop and checked in. I was surprised to see that my roomate was Mark from Gigi's dad's class, it was nice to see a familliar face. The hotel room was a little small, but pretty nice because ITS A HOTEL :-). They come every day and make our beds, clean the room, and give us more tea.
Somehow the next morning we both woke up at 7 which was a shocker because I went to bed at 2. We decided to seize the day and start exploring. There were a bunch of old people outside waving their arms in slow motion. I later found out this sillieness was Tai Chi. We walked down the street and passed a few street vendors (see above) selling breakfast. Mark bought me a thin-crust omelette for a whopping 3 Yuan/RMB since I didn't have any money yet. Yes ladies and gents, that's approximately $0.37 with the dollar at 7.8 RMB. I savored every bite of my first meal in China.

The KFC pic is there because the Chinese people seem to love the Coloniel. I've seen at least 6 of them in the vicinity of campus, which means more friend chicken per capita than even the ATL can compete with. I know I should be experiencing the Chinese culture and not be hanging on to familliarity, but I had to see what all the craze was about so I succumbed today against the advice of my group and bought a leg. It was quite delicious.

We continued walking on Sunday morning for about an hour and passed through an exciting meat and vegetable market with just about any type of animal part you could wish for being offered. We made it back to campus for the 8:30 orientation session. Here we met up with some more friendly volunteers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I chatted with them and got some of their background info. They all attend another campus of the university which is in the city about half an hour away. Dr. Tong Zhou led us around the campus for a tour and then into the surrounding city.

Wow! I never thought China would be so modern (It doesn't even seem like I'm that far away from home with everyone I know only a click away). The city feels a lot like like New York with many people walking around, except there are 10 times the people PLUS the bikers on the streets and the scooters coming at you on the sidewalks. The shopping mall we toured was huge! It was at least 5 Lenox malls combined and included all the brand name stores 5 times over. I opened up a bank account at the Bank of China and got my $20 converted.


Oh yeah, and who was it that said "They all speak English over there?" because that definitely isn't the case! You are not going to want to play charades with me when I get back. Sometimes I crack up right in the middle of a "conversation" because of the fact that I'm speaking totally in English, and they're speaking all Chinese! Most of the time the point gets across though. Stan and I got lunch in one of the million food courts in the supermall. I was a little disappointed by the choices, but Stan was happy about the pork intestines, yumm. Afterwords we set out to buy cell phones which turned out to be a fun experience. We bargained with a couple guys and ended up getting a couple "used" (stolen) phones and prepaid cards for about $25 each. The funny thing was all the phone guys seemed to be friends with one another. They knew the phrase "5 minute" and would make a call or send someone out for a run to gather the right charger or battery.


Last night, we had a group dinner at the hotel which was pretty lethargic. Everyone seemed to be at the same point in their jetlag. I headed upstairs for an early bedtime around 9. Today was our first day of class. I had Thermo and Statistics this morning and 3040 is tomorrow. I hope I can keep up this early rising cycle because class is at 8 everyday, although it seems to be easier because the sun rises at 4:30! I had a couple rounds of bubble tea and had fun launching the tapioca balls from the window of our classroom building. When we walked out of class for a break, we saw two fish on the sidewalk. That was a little weird. It's 12 and time to go to bed. I am so glad I'm done writing this. Goodnight!