Half way around the world in 14 hours

Our Chinese adventure started with Christine's mom and my dad trying their best not to cry as we parted at the security gate at the airport. Here we are looking good:

I'm starting to look Chinese already

Our flight to Chicago was easy, but the 5 hour layover wasn't. Our first taste of culture shock came while we were camped out in the Chicago to Shanghai terminal. As the hours wore on, more and more Chinese nationals started to fill the room.

The flight was looong, but they fed and watered us often. Christine was kind enough to capture me on film somewhere over the Bering Strait.


I like to match my shirt with my pillow.

We were both pretty groggy when we landed, but getting through Chinese customs was a breeze. Shanghai High School sent one of their Chinese teachers to meet us and the five other teachers who were on our flight as soon as we got through security. We were put onto a bus and brought to our new apartments. We were introduced to George, the funny old guy who runs our building. I'm sure we'll write about him a lot, since he speaks very little English, but is our go to guy for getting things done. Christine and I have tried to learn something new to say to him in Mandarin every day. We'll try to get a picture soon.

We got lucky and scored an apartment in the newest building on campus. We were expecting to get the closet sized apartments shown on the school's website, but it turns out we're living in a palace:

Livingroom and Kitchen

Bedroom (they don't have fitted sheets in China)

Look: no hole in the ground

We spent our first weekend getting our bearings in our new neighborhood. Christine and I have been trying the local street cuisine, which is a little scary, but it's tasted better than the food we've gotten from the restaurants (in my opinion). We found a vendor who cooks up these Chinese breakfast burritos. Christine learned the name of it, so I'll let her cover that. We're also about half of a block from the Shanghai Botanical garden. Our first morning in the city, we were in the park by 8 am since we couldn't sleep. We got there in time to see all of the old people doing tai chi. We also found this (very) amateur authentic Chinese band:

It's hard to see, but there's a guy playing a flute, a guy playing this thing, and about 10 people singing out of tune. It was sweet.

My only complaint so far is the smog. Here's a view from a 5 story Best Buy:



Two things China has a lot of: people and pollution

-Jeremy