Kyle Nicholson

Headed downtown today. A quick taxi ride from the subway station and I found my self on Nanjing Road. The first thing you notice as you get downtown closer to the river is how polluted the air is. It seemed to be significantly worst on the Puxi side.

A clear sunny day I think looking into Pudong…

This has to be one of the busiest rivers in the world ships every 150ft or so.

Totally Sweet houseboat….

The *fearless* leader himself

I wanted to get from the Puxi to the Pudong side of the river and there was a tourist tunnel listed on the map. My fear was though that some how the thing was going to leak river water on me, and I was going to instantly melt.

To my surprise it was the coolest thing of the day. You board this little train car and go through the most tripped out tunnel I have seen. The time lapse photography rocks..

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Well, now the critical challenges of life. Lots of tasks that would normally be routine become interesting. I had to find water, food, a pillow, get my key to my dorm room and several other basic tasks.

The water was easy, apparently I didn’t see the the tank of bottled water across from my dorm room the previous day. To think I only had 6 more days to live if I didn’t find anything, made it a relief. Morning breakfast was my cliff bar reserve, didn’t want to experiment this early in the morning.

The first big surprise of the day is that I went and met with the school staff, and apparently the Chinese consulate gave me an X visa instead of an F. That means I have to go get a medical check later this week and that should cost me $75 USD. That should be real interesting. Fun, Fun.

On, to my other missions for the day. After googling I learn there is a hypermarket called Carrefour about 15 minutes by foot away from school. So I head out…

The surrounding area is reallativly new, and seems to be a rich section of town. The first restraunt I pass has a big sign for BBQ and Jack Daniels. This aint too bad. The streets are wide, with bike paths on both sides. Here are a few pictures.

There are no mountains around but you can by a sweet MTN bike…

Now as I walk along I am getting hungry. Being this my first meal, I didn’t want to expiriment too much. That will come later. So what do I happen to pass? A Papa John’s! Sweet pizza. Having worked at the headquarters for 5 years this should be interesting. It is both a sit-down and delivery style. Then menu is much more complicated with additions of soup, and some other “strange things.” I play it safe and point to the 9″ pepperoni pizza. It tasted pretty good too, crust was a little less fluffy but I was full.

Now on to the Hypermarket. This is like a Wal-mart on steroids. Huge, two stories with dinners and specialty stores down stairs. You can find anything here I got the high-end pillow for $7 USD and some water. I am going to have to return to get me a live turtle, or maybe some live fish to keep as pets or dinner.

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Well, I have made it to Shanghai China. Just a 14 hour flight out of Chicago and 7,200 miles away from Bloomington, Indiana.

The flight was interesting, the sun barely got below the horizon as we flew above the arctic circle. The large ice bergs broken up were about the most interesting view out the window, until we flew over the mountains along the China, Russian border.

When landing over the many farms at Pudong airport the most surprising sight was a large scale wind farm. Didn’t expect that as I thought most everything was coal fired over here. I will now slowly begin the totally incorrect stereotype of all Chinese people. They are all tree-huggers.

Heading through customs, baggage claim, money exchange was surprisingly easy and fast. Which I was thankful for because the opperators of the dorm where I live go home at 5:00pm and my flight landed at 3:00pm. The taxi line was short and after showing the driver the map of where I wanted to go I was off. People told me the driving would be crazy, but after visiting Peru this past spring, the driving here was way better.

The school I am attending is the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and I am living on campus in one of the dorm rooms. After some interesting conversation of me telling them I was moving in, smiling, and shaking my head yes to what ever they were saying. I was shown my Palace, except they didn’t give me a key to get back into the room till the next day.

So here it the 10 meter square palace… Oh and the TV doesn’t work, by the way.

One of nice surprises was that the shower head wasn’t 5ft high and was actually taller than most in the United States. No ducking in the shower rocks.

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