Days 1-3 in China

Well this is my first entry in the China blog. This is day 3 of my trip to China. I've been so busy up to this point, so this is a good time to reflect the past 3 days.

Day 1 (Tuesday & Wednesday, March 15 & 16)

I left Chicago O'hare Airport on Tuesday afternoon at 12:30pm. Our plane didn't take off until about 1:15pm. I had about a 14 hour plane ride -- way too long for me. I was looking forward to the movies onboard, but most didn't work in the plane and the movies that did work, I had already seen. In addition to the bad movies was, as you can guess, the bad food. They served chicken teryaki (gross) and pasta (really gross). I lived off of my peanut butter crackers I packed in my carry on bag. I slept about 3 to 4 hours on the plane which isn't too bad. It was very uncomfortable trying to sleep on the plane. I ended up leaning over my mom's extra seat with two pillows and sleeping.

I arrived in Shanghai at about 6:00pm Wednesday night Shanghai time (4:00am Wednesday Illinois time). After landing, I went through customs and retrieved our bags. From there I took the hotel shuttle to our Ramada hotel located right outside the airport grounds. After checking into the hotel, we were starving. We went down to the Western Restaurant in the hotel and had pasta with bolognese sauce. After eating a good meal, we were pretty tired as you can imagine so we went to bed for the night.

Day 2 (Thursday, March 16)

The bed in the hotel is really low to the ground and very hard. I was unsure if I would be able to sleep on such a hard bed, but I guess if you are tired you can sleep on anything. I did pretty well sleeping through the night, only waking up at 2:00am and 5:00am. I finally got up around 6:00am. My mom and I went down to the fitness center and worked out for about 30 minutes. We then went back to the Western restaurant and I had french toast for breakfast and my mom had the pancakes. She got 3 very small pancakes and she had a piece of my french toast. We were energized again and looking forward to the day ahead. My mom's company has a full-time driver so he picked us up at the hotel at 10:30am.

First stop - People's Square. This is located in downtown Shanghai and a few parks and museums are there too. As we approached downtown Shanghai I was really surprised at how many buildings I see and how many people there are. All of the apartment buildings had clothes hanging outside drying them. Most residents rode bikes or mopeds around town. As we arrived to People's Square we took pictures of the museum and the buildings surrounding the area. There was one spot where a lot of people were feeding the pigeons. We took a few pictures and proceeded down the sidewalk when a lady stopped us and wanted to take our picture! I was surprised that she wanted to take our picture, but my mom said that they don't see a lot of foreigners here.

This is something that I will have to get used to. Just walking down the street people stare at you and talk about you. It was very sunny and nice that day so I had my sunglasses on. I think that made me stand out even more. My mom said they might think I was a movie star! Anyway, after seeing the museum we found an underground mall and looked around at all the shops. My mom bought some nail polish, but we didn't see anything that looked tempting.

After People's Square we proceeded to Yu Yuan Gardens. We were getting hungary so we ate at McDonalds. Our driver ordered for us and I told him to order me a double cheesburger with no onions. I am grateful that he was there to order otherwise I would get onions on my burger. After we ate lunch, we stopped at the restroom and very grateful that they had toilets in the restroom. As you may know, most of the public restrooms are just holes in the floor. Anyway, we went to Yu Yuan Gardens and I really enjoyed the architecture, waters, and the landscaping. They had a lot of shops outside the gardens and we purchased some T-Shirts and I got a budda head with 4 different sides, each with a different emotion.

After the Yu Yuan Gardens, we went to the Bund. The Bund is in Pudong, across the river from Shanghai. We went on the sightseeing bridge and took some great pictures of the buildings in the Bund. While I was taking pictures, a guy took a picture of me. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I just can't believe that people will just take my picture!! Oh well, the Bund is known for the futuristic buildings including the Pearl Tower. We are scheduled to go there again and go to the top of the Pearl Tower on Saturday or Sunday. It was getting that time to pick up Kim and Chelsie (my mom's co-worker and his daughter) from the airport. We wanted to ride the new Maglev train which stops at the airport so our driver dropped us off at the stop and we rode it to the airport. The train went up to about 431km/hr which is about 200mph to 300mph. After picking up Kim and Chelsie we drove to Suzhou which took about 3 hours (lot of traffic!). We checked in and went to bed for the night.

Day 3 (Friday, March 17)

I woke up at about 6:00am and ate breakfast with everyone. My mom and Kim are going into work today so it was just Chelsie and I today. Chelsie's bag was lost on her airplane so she wanted to go shopping and buy a few clothes. We took a taxi down to walking street (a popular shopping area in Suzhou) and she bought a few clothes and I bought a cross stitch kit. It was a chinese character picture, but I am unable to understand what it means. I will have to get Yankee (our driver) to translate it for me. Hopefully it doesn't say anything bad . We ate at Pizza Hut for lunch which was very good. Chelsie had the veggie pizza which included pineapple and corn! She said it was good, so I'll have to take her word for it. We came back to the hotel around 1:00pm which gave me time to watch the Indiana Hoosier's game. I am grateful that CBS is broadcasting the games free over the internet and I was able to watch Indiana beat San Diego State.

Well Chelsie and I are getting picked up by Yankee at 3:30 and we are going into my mom's work and then going out to dinner. I am crossing my fingers that the restaurant has something I like. All over China that have some disgusting food like Chicken on a Stick. Not chicken like chicken fingers or chicken tenders, this is little chickens (the whole chicken) on a stick!

That is all for now. Hopefully I can write sooner next time. Later!

Jennifer