The First Day

My day on Thursday began with waking up at 3:30am in order to leave for the airport by about 4:30. We didn't end up leaving until about 4:50, which was okay, since we planned on 4:30 as a way to include lots of buffer, as our flight out of Indy didn't depart until 7:10am. We relaxed in the airport for a while before heading through security and making our way to the gate, where we met up with others in the group. The short 47 minute flight to Chicago began with the sun just peaking over the horizon.

The departing flight from there wasn't until 10:10am local time, so we had over two hours to kill in between flights. The rest of the group flying from Chicago trickled in and we boarded the long non-stop flight to Shanghai. The flight was supposed to take 14 hours and 40 minutes, but we made it in an hour less than that. I didn't get much sleep on the plane at all, but somehow, the adrenaline rush of arriving has seemed to give me plenty of energy to keep going throughout this evening. We were hoping to get some good pictures of Shanghai while we descended, but the haze in the air was too thick to really see anything. However, I did get one of the guys sitting in a window seat to get a really neat picture while we were going over a part of Russia. We landed at 1:50pm local time on Friday.

I'm not sure if those are mountains or what....It's hard to tell when you're 6.8 miles up.

It took us a while to get through immigration and customs, but we did make it all through by about 4:00. The drive to our hotel was about 1 hour through Shanghai.

I'm not mad here, I think my eyes were tired of wearing my contacts.

 

 

Of course, as an engineer, I had to get a picture of the bridge. 

Apparently, it's really common in China to use bamboo for scaffolding.

When we made it to the hotel room, we had a few minutes to settle in to our rooms and look at our packets for school.

My ID card for Shanghai Jiao Tong University

After everyone was done with that, we went to eat at the dining court on campus. With my first meal, I learned my first lesson in Shanghai. That is, this white American can't quite handle the spices of China.......yet. I was asked if I wanted pepper in my soup, and I said I'd take a little. As I was taking one of the first few bites, I happened to inhale the fumes, which set me to coughing. The burn traveled from my throat to my nose, making me want to sneeze something fierce. Trying to keep that from happening, I went to my drink. Well, we all know how well carbonated beverages mix with spicy, and my coughing became even worse. By this time, I had a few tears streaming from down face, which was no doubt red. Eacy, one of the people from the university here helping us, told me that next time I should ask for no la, the Mandarin word for peppery or hot. I will say, even though the food was spicier than I would have preferred, it was quite delicious.

My face didn't stay like this for long....

After dinner, a small group of us walked around town for a bit, initially to find the mall that the rest of the group went to, but when we couldn't, we just strolled and talked. Two of the guys hadn't eaten yet, so we were looking for a place to get them food. We hesitated outside of one small beef and noodles shop and one of the employees came out and worked on us until we agreed to sit down. I didn't eat anything since I was just recently come from my spice escapade, but it did smell good and I would like to go back there before we move to the other campus in February.

Raffy, Chris (roommate), Thej, Scott, Evan

After that, we resumed our wandering around. The are of Shanghai where we are is something to see at night. After making a wrong turn and fixing it, we made it back to our hotel at about 9:30.

You can't really see it, but there were lot's of laser lights coming off the top of these buildings.

It's been a long past couple of days, but I'm super excited about what all I'll discover here and what I'll learn! Now it's time to cash out for the evening and hope jet lag doesn't have too much to say about my sleep schedule. I'm a college student, I'm supposed to be used to random and bizarre sleep sleep times right? Well, hopefully.

Have a Splendiferous Day!