The First Random 24 hours in Shanghai
Shanghai, China
Shanghai, China
Ni Hao! I arrived in Shanghai finally after 11:30pm Sunday night! I missed the entire day in the atmosphere somewhere. I heard we flew over the North Pole because its the quickest way to China. Fancy! 13.30 hours to Beijing…I think my flight to China was the shortest out of everyone.
The Air China plane DID NOT have a T.V so I slept the entire ride, read my books, tried to study some Chinese, write in my journal and they had no vegetarian options for me =( So I ate the rice and veggies around it, tried some yogurt, ate the fruit and some lettuce that they called salad. Dad always taught us to eat what you can and when you can…especially if you don’t know when your next meal is! That’s probably going to be my mantra for this journey of mine. I hope i don’t disappear from this limited eating =) … From Beijing I had to collect my luggage and bring it back through customs..mind you my layover was only about 1.5 hours. I went through Immigration and then security and made it in time with about 4 minutes to spare until boarding! Whew! I did a lot of praying … Once I got online to board I was looking for the other CIEE participate whom I was supposed to meet there and low and behold she lined up right behind me and asked “Would you happen to be Medinah?…not that Im stereotyping or anything” LOL (In Beijing, I was like the ONLY black person in the airport. I stuck out like a sore thumb!. This little girl kept staring at me on the airplane as if I was an exhibit.)
So we finally make it to Shanghai and the CiEE participate loses her luggage in transit. Then we waiting on an hour long taxi line that wounded like a snake. There was of course some hustlers trynna get us to get on their taxi saying “No wait, taxi service” ..(Yea right! -I saw TAKEN!)
We get to the location on this foggy night and the front gates are locked. We are like Oh No…What if we were the only two fools who bought into this farce program! -___- I was sick. So our cab driver went across the street and asked and he found us another entrance. Thank God…we spoke no Chinese–he was just so nice enough to help us to where we needed to be.The security then pointed us to where we needed to be..basically he said make a right then a left. WTH? So i pull out my handy dandy flashlight and we go looking for our building. We walked up the ally and found the Faculty Club! Thank GoD and is greeted and taken to our rooms. I didnt get into my room until about 3am didnt go to sleep until almost 5am and had to be up by 8am!
As of right now I am pooped! Exhausted. For breakfast I was turnt down by the french fries. For lunch they had a much better selection and for dinner we went to this weird restaurant where they did a performance for us. Dinner was pretty good. I am horrible at eating with chopsticks…and too think! I am too lazy to wait that long to eat. It takes too long. I was full after eating like 2 things of bak choy and some noodles and some soup. Soup was the easiest thing. They gave us a SPOON! =) [good thing I brought my own utensils while I’m in the luxury of being by myself!
