Day 1

Shanghai Trip – Day 1

 

So I started the day by falling in the OKC airport – tripped over my own luggage at 5 am…  - and it was up from there..

 

My flight arrived early in Chicago and I did not need to go to the international terminal (yeah!!) no extra security..

 

This is the most packed plane I have ever been on..  Turkish Air was a much more luxurious airline. But the flight was fine.. I had a bloody mary and slept a little. Actually I got so much work done.. Read two books and finalized a bunch of the documents for teaching both my class in China and stateside.. So productive..

 

It's a long long trip…  the time ticked slowly…  Note to self buy more water in the airport  - but overall things were good..

 

Cool things…  We flew over Sheboygan…  Cool thing 2  - we spent most of our flight flying over Alaska, the artic ocean, and Russia.. Kind of cool..

 

See my picture of the sunset as we crossed the international date line.. 

 

The flight is supposed to be 14 hours and 10 minutes.  The last two hours were the worst.. they seemed to never ever end..   but I got a lot of work done.

 

We arrived at Shanghai at about 3:00 pm.. after leaving the airplane we had to walk through the terminal and turn in a form that said we were not sick.. we had to walk through something that looked like a xray machine – but I think it was set up to take temperature.

 

The wait was about an hour to go to entry (another form) and then pick up luggage and go through customs.

 

Andrew Shall is the class leader who is my host…   He met me at the airport and then we took the speed train to get closer to the part of town we are in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

 

 

It was very nice and clean…  I got to see a little of the country side.. but we were not yet in the city proper so to speak – still on the outskirts..

We went to my hotel – which is nice. It is a chain like holiday inn.. The room has a very thin king sized bed, a walk in shower, a chair, and broadband.

 

I am thankful for the broadband because there is no English TV and I like the noise.. so I have been able to listen to KGOU.

 

Next he took to me a large grocery store called … I really resisted being the tourist I am to take pictures.. Things are little different…  There are tons of service – many many people in every row.. You never see that in the US..

 

This market had a lot of fresh food and also an international section. 

 

I was able to get a few oranges, water, and a bunch of different juices and milk teas to try some of the local drinks. (I was shopping thirsty from my plane trip)  I also got what I thought was beef jerky but it turned out to be Yaki jerky.   I had Andrew help me buy a selection of steamed rolls filled with different things. One was filled with cabbage and some sort of fish, another tasted a little like spinach artichoke dip (but I think it was sea weed), another was bean (I did not like it) and the forth tasted like mostly vegetables.  It was a great dinner and very local (ie.. from the restaurant deli counter)..  It was 5.6 Rmb's  or 82 cents and it was a large filling meal. 

 

My whole basket which was a lot of convenience drinks was $16.72..

 

Back to the room, I crashed at 8:30..

But since it was 7am eastern time.. I took a minute to skype my Mom and let her know that I arrived okay..  (It was too early to call others) and I was out..