Day 1

Our whole group of 8 students and 2 instructors had all arrived by 5:15 am.  We checked in and boarded the plane for Detroit.  Nothing too exciting on that stretch of the trip.  In Detroit, we laid over for nearly 3 hours.  There were small shops at the airport that Carrie and I walked through.  We boarded the plane for Shanghai around 11:30 am.  The 14 hour flight wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  I’m not sure how many hours I slept but I know I fell asleep twice on the flight.  I also read an entire novel, watched a movie (Philomena was a good movie and yes, I was interested in watching a movie about a woman with the same name as my oldest daughter), and played card games on my tablet.  The food was better than I expected on the flight.

We landed in Shanghai and got through all the inspections without any difficulties.  We found the people we were meeting and had a smooth bus ride to our dorm rooms at East China Normal University.  The city was so different to look at as we drove.  There seemed to be little to no space between the houses or apartment buildings.  Houses were tall and skinny, while apartment buildings were even taller.  Our dorm building (pictured below) has 15 floors and looks very normal compared to all the other buildings’ height.

 

Carrie and I are rooming together.  As we got settled, I got out my power converter so I could charge my tablet.  The cord got very hot so I unplugged it.  Then I tried to plug in my power strip.  I fried it so our room smelled and it was smoky.  Carrie opened up a window to try to air us out.  Then I read in fine print that the power converter I’d bought was not to be used with electronic equipment.  So that was a wasted $20.  Luckily, I’d bought the 3 prong converter from Radio Shack for my computer.  It is working to charge my phone, tablet, and computer.

Carrie and I ate supper at the restaurant next to our dorm.  The food was good and I successfully fed myself with chopsticks.  She and I then walked around the university campus.  We bought bottled water and I bought an ice cream cone.  It think it was mango and coconut flavored, but I could be wrong since I couldn’t read the wrapper!

The water pressure in the shower was good but for some reason we had no cold water.  It was burning hot to stand under.  I was in bed by 8:15 pm and slept well until 7 am the next morning.