Initial Impressions - Arrival

If any of you have been checking the website to see if we arrived safely, or for updates on our adventure, I apologize for the delay in this first post. You see, China has blocked access to most blogging websites and it was difficult and time consuming to redesign my website from another country. However, as simplistic as the site looks right now, it works. And it will be updated as I have more time.

Time. There's not a lot of it recently. The program I am working with - Council of International Education & Exchange (CIEE from here on out) has set up an orientation week. So before I fly to my final destination of Qingdao, in Northeast China, we are here in western Shanghai. There are currently about 20 American teachers in the program, and we are all staying in a faculty hotel at a University over here. Each day is filled with early breakfast, survival Chinese lessons, guest lectures, simulated classroom activities, case studies, group dinners, and sightseeing excursions. As you can imagine, with Jetlag and an intensly busy schedule, free time is hard to come by. But I've jumped the gun, lets go back to how this began.

3:15AM -- We arrive at SeaTac Airport. Luckily we are one of the first groups of people to show up for our 6AM flight, so we have the outdoor bag weigh stations to ourselves. The next 30 minutes are filled with weighing, reweighing, transferring luggage & removing luggage. A juggling act that finally results in 1 really overweight bag and 5 bags juuuuust underweight (1lb or less clearance on each). Next was a short 30 minute hop to Vancouver, into a 4 hour layover. Karen and I were thankful for the layover, as we slept on benches until 20 minutes prior to boarding. The 13 hour flight to Shanghai felt like an eternity. Swear to God - the babies in the back of the plane had a pact that they would rotate sleeping, jumping/kicking, and SCREAMING! Seriously, there were 3 toddlers who each had the pipes of an accomplished Opera singer, and everyone fortunate to sit in the back of the plane were treated to a free performance.

Other than the seeds of Satan, the flight was pretty good. We landed in Shanghai, navigated our way around the foreign airport, and made it through customs. Once through, we were greeted by throngs of Chinese, waving flags, banners, and name tags - all shouting in a language that I cannot yet understand. I cannot imagine being a businessman, travelling abroad, and trying to connect with a partner or contact in this city. I was poked and yelled at while frantic Chinese people pointed at the crudely drawn english names they had scrawled on pieces of cardboard. We met the other CIEE participants who had also been on our flight, some of who also had some choice words for the live, in-flight entertainment.

After waiting for over an hour for a lost traveller (who's flight was delayed 5 hours in Chicago we learned later) we were aboard a bus to our CIEE faculty hotel destination.