We're Here...and Surviving on Clif Bars

We made it...4 days ago. We left my house at 6am Saturday morning in plenty of time for our flight at 8:55. All 4 of our giant suitcases weighed in right at 50lbs each, thankfully. 200lbs of luggage and I really don't even know what we brought that could have possibly added to that large sum. For all that weight I'm wishing we would have packed a little smarter...although I am sure we'll be glad we have sweaters in a few months. Either way, after a little breakfast with my parents in the airport we said a sad goodbye to them and the comforts of home: no more squishy carpet, home cooked meals of mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, no more pizza, and no more adorable cozy dog to play with.

Both Joel and I had our hopes up about the flight simply due to the fact that his parent's foreign exchange student's grandpa apparently founded Korean Airlines and we had only heard good things. The first flight was just a normal little Delta plane to Chicago which landed us in a terminal we thought we would be leaving out of for our international flight. After some lunch and about an hours' time just sitting at a random gate, we decided to ask someone as a gate for departure had yet to be posted on the screen. After being told it was in a completely different terminal and in one we would have to catch a bus and the tram to, we hurried over to the international terminal (makes sense) to wait. The flight to Seoul was a little disappointing because we were hoping for personal tvs on the backs of the chairs to pass the time. The plane was super old and only had one giant projector that we could barely see from our last row seats. Movie features: Be Kind: Rewind and My Mighty Princess. We watched the first one but clearly passed on the second. The first meal on the plane was either "beef" or "korean" and because I had no idea what the 2nd option was (I thought she may have said "vegetarian") I just said "I'll have that" and was served a plate of unidentifiable objects and an instruction card. I thought one of them was going to be instant noodles because she poured hot water into a styrofoam cup. It was instead, Seaweed soup.



The Seoul airport provided us with an arts and crafts project in a little Korean Culture Center they had set up, "For Foreigners Only." We spent 30 minutes glueing papers to a box and came out with our first 2 pieces of decoration for our apartment here.

The flight from Seoul to Shanghai was on one of their brand new planes that of course had little tvs where we could watch movies and play tetris against each other. I was too tired to care after 30 minutes of the flight and in another 30 we were on the ground in China. Customs was a breeze and as soon as we got our bags we walked out into a gauntlet of Chinese people waiting to pick up their loved ones. We found a group of people holding a sign with our names and followed them to the van. The group was 1 office worker who spoke English and a group of Japanese teachers who had flown in that day as well to teach for the year (Japanese, of course).

We arrived at the school 3 hours later and had to carry our bags up 4 flights of stairs to our apartment, room 403. Its pretty nice, although needed lots of cleaning and definitely needs some personal touch. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. We've since been exploring the town, going to bed at 3 in the afternoon, waking up at 5am, and eating strange food. Joel ate something that resembled a very large raw meatball yesterday, while I stuck with anything on the table of the vegetable variety. Aside from freaking out the first night, we're enjoying our lives here so far. We are looking forward to feeling more comfortable in town and hopefully learning at least enough Chinese to get around. I'll let Joel describe in more detail some funny experiences we've had since arriving in this foreign land! We miss you all!