Nihao Shanghai

I have arrived in Shanghai, China.

I met some friendly people during my flights and honestly don’t know how 23 hours of travel ended up feeling like 2. My 14 hour flight between Korea and Shanghai was in a Korean Air plane. Gorgeous and fully equipped with personal TVs and free ‘adult’ drinks :-)There is nothing better than good movies, good conversation, and cold korean beer to make the time fly by.

Now, about Shanghai: This place is huge, vast, unreserved, busy, noisy, dirty, and beautiful. I’ve come to realize that Shanghai - and perhaps this is the case with all of China - leaves a definite impression of organized chaos... And by this I mean that it runs like a well oiled machine, but the individual parts are muddled and sometimes don’t make complete sense. Things get done in such a quick manner that I sometimes wonder if they aren’t missing any steps somewhere. In any case I’m in love and it will have fun documenting my time here.

A few things I’ve learned since I arrived last night:

). Blogger, YouTube, and Wikipedia all work on the internt. I’ve even looked up Tibet and there seems to be no censoring. Hmmm, interesting.

). Shanghai is not as big as you would think. Yes it is home to millions of people but it’s spread out and the variety in buildings make it look smaller than it really is. .. So far, New York had a Bigger ‘Big City’ feel to me than Shanghai because of the enormity of its Sky Scrapers.

). Drivers are crazy. Literally CRAZY. There are no driving accidents ever, but 2 people died from being run over last year. yikes.

). Things ARE cheaper: 15 cents for bottles of water, a restaurant meal for three came to 11 dollars, a bus ride goes for between 15 and 43 cents a ride.

). It’s warmer – between 10-13 degrees a day now BUT it’s a wet cold and no one has any central heating... people wear coats indoors. (My apt and hotel room are equipped with heaters... thank god.)

). People are really helpful. When I got on the bus and showed the driver the address I needed to get to, he proceeded to ask if anyone could assist us in finding out where I needed to go. 4 people then got up and looked at the card I was holding. There was then a lengthy and loud Chinese discussion between the 4 passengers and driver which resulted in one passenger showing me in fingers the number of stops before my stop... And then continued the countdown with his fingers until I arrived at my stop. So sweet.

). People love to say hi just for the sake of saying hello and then act slightly embarrassed when I respond with a friendly smile.

). Medical Examinations are ridiculous and if you have a sense of humour, can be quite funny. There is nothing like having x-rays and ultrasounds in a Shanghai Medical Clinic.

). I’ve only been here for about 20 hours and can’t imagine the depth of exploration one could make here, I must have walked for hours, in and out of alleys and streets and buildings looking for an idea of what this city is about. More on this later.


Also: I will be starting my orientation tomorrow, and this will go on for three days. I am moving into my place on Saturday and then start work on Monday...!

Will also post pics for you soon as well.

Much love. xx