Thoughts.com Blogs - Welcome to Shanghai

I have arrived in Shanghai.

This has been a surreal experience thus far! I didn't start to panic until I was walking onto the plane to go to Shanghai. Then it hit me! So I had 14 hours to panic, it was great. Ok, so I didn't panic, just had a lot of time to reflect and think. It was a good (long) trip.

But alas, I made it. Today is a beautiful day, it is sunny and hot and there's a really nice breeze. I met Andrew who works in the SBB office here and we went for a short walk with his daughter Katie. Andrew and his wife are originally from London but have been living here in Shanghai for about 3 years. They are a very nice family. Andrew said today is a great day because the wind is pushing the pollution away. It should be interesting to see what it's like on a pollution-y day.

It is a little overwhelming being in a country and having absolutely no grasp of the language. I didn't panic in that aspect until I walked into a little convenience store across the street from my hotel in search of a calling card. Everything in that store was written in Chinese and I couldn't tell what anything was at all. I didn't even see anything resembling a calling card, so then I panicked. No, I just gave up and ended up calling Zack collect with a credit card. I'm going to love seeing how much that one costs!

Breakfast this morning was... interesting. I'm not feeling that adventurous yet with the food, so I played it safe and had some fruit and a piece of bacon and some pumpkin. I lost eight pounds in the past couple weeks on a mostly-no-carb diet, and I am very nervous about eating here in China, since everything seems to be carbs: noodles, rice, bread, etc. Traveling is really not good for dieting and trying to lose weight. So I guess I'm just going to try to eat light no matter what I eat, but being hungry is always dangerous! Anyway, there was a lot of weird stuff for breakfast, and no scrambled eggs or sunny-side-up eggs, which is what I normally eat, so I was sad. Oh-there was milk which I was excited about but then when I drank it, it was thick and almost sour---really gross. I usually drink skim milk so that was a huge change. Bummer! But the foods in other countries are always the most challenging, when you're used to your own country's foods. I remember I didn't care for German food at all, Brazilian was ok, Domican was similar to Brazilian, but the best ever was definitely Mexican, although even there I ate and saw some bizarre things.

I started missing Zack as soon as I got on the plane to fly to Shanghai. I miss him like crazy! And I just looked at a pic of Lupita a little bit ago and started missing her a lot too. It might be a long three weeks!!

I lost my cell phone before I even left Pittsburgh. It is either in my car or on the back of my car, and I'm pretty sure it's the back of my car. Not cool! I feel so lost without it. It's especially uncool because I usually use it as my alarm clock, and for some reason there is no clock in my hotel room, so I am alarm-less! Not good for a non-morning person. I'm trying to play around with an alarm on my computer, but if that fails I guess I'll resort to the hotel's wake-up call.

Andrew said it's very safe to walk around and explore, so that's probably what I'll do today. I did a little walking today and it was alright, just so hard not even knowing how to say "excuse me" or "thank you" or even "HI!" Andrew taught me hi, but I'm not going to lie, I already forgot it. Chinese is such a hard language!!

My bed is rock-hard. I think the floor might be more comfortable! The only English tv channels are CNN and HBO, but there's only old stuff on HBO, like 10-15 years old stuff. It's weird!

If anyone has any questions for me about what anything's like here, feel free to ask! I'm sure I'll have more to say as time goes by...

This is the view from my hotel room: (click to see it bigger)

Oh, and I am using this blog thing because I can't seem to get myspace to work regularly. I can't get the blog page to work at all, so, you'll have to deal with this!

I'd say goodbye in Chinese...but I don't know how! So instead...

Peace, dearhearts...