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.
