I have so much I want to say about China. I actually was able to journal each of my days in Shanghai because we had internet access. Unfortunately the Chinese government screens what websites you can get on... so I was not able to get onto my blogs. I was really bummed because I thought it would be great to post my pictures and comments as we went. Here is the first day and a little of my feelings. If you read my private family blog I will probably be posting similar things on that since I print that blog in our family book each year.
We started out by having a taxi come pick us up at our home in the US at 4:15am. Oh boy! Of course the $30 cab ended up being $60 after a short detour. Oh well. We flew to Vancouver, CA and hung out for 4 hours. The airport was beautiful. Then we were off to our destination of Shanghai. The plane ride to China was almost 12 hours nonstop from Canada. It flew by! We had so much fun together. Slept for only 2 or 3 hours, even with an ambien. Maybe the excitement got us. We had 3 good meals, watched a few movies and tv shows available on the seat in front of us, read some of my book and before we knew it we were here!
We took a private van that our tour guides from Brody’s MBA school had set up. On the bus we met the nicest couple, Alicia & Darrel, from Chicago. We unpacked and went for our adventure to the fabric market of Shanghai to buy Brody some new suits. The hotel wrote down where we wanted to go in Chinese and we showed that to our taxi driver. There we met a 22 year old girl that I saw each day while in Shanghai. She told me all about the customs, traditions. She took us to a restaurant in the back roads of Shanghai. No Americans around! Everyone rides bikes, rusty ones. Men pulling huge loads of scrap metal or other goods on trailers. Kids on small motorcycles with their parents in the middle of the street. Clothes drying from all the high rise apartment buildings. At dinner no one spoke English obviously. We found one picture that remotely looked like noodles and ordered that. A bunch of deep fried crispy noodles came out with shrimp that we didn't dare eat. But it was our first night! We were on a adventure. Through the subsequent days in China we weren't as "excited" about our rare Chinese food finds.
