Uhmm.... I'M IN CHINA!!!

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Nope, still doesn't feel real. I don't even know where to start. This post is going to be extremelyyyy long. So pull up a chair, folks.

Megan and I left Dayton at 8:47 on Wednesday morning. She and her grandparents picked me up at my apartment after I said a teary and extremely difficult goodbye to Lucas. But I did way better than I thought I would! It really helps that I know he genuinely wants me to do this and is happy for me. How did I get so lucky?

So we flew from Dayton to Chicago, uneventfully, and then Chicago to LA. Both of our layovers were an hour so that was amazing. In LA we boarded our 12 hour flight to Shanghai. The plane was humongous and it honestly terrified me to think of how it was staying 40,000 feet in the air. I think we probably skipped off the gate, we were SO excited to be in CHINA!!!

We collected our luggage and went to Immigration. Except, we got in the China native line and not the foreigners line so everyone stared at us like we were the dumbest humans alive. But none of the workers said anything and we made it through just fine. Customs was seriously the biggest joke ever. We didn't have to fill out a form, talk to anyone, or open our bags. We literally just went right on through! Works for me. I was feeling pretty great about that until we walked to the other side and saw two guards carrying assault rifles. They don't mess around.

Then we found my wonderful roommate Kate! I seriously love this girl so much already, she is SUCH a doll. She did an awesome job finding the hotel shuttle for us after about two hours of aimlessly wondering around. Seriously people, being in a place the size of Fairborn where NO ONE speaks English, is crazy hard to get used to. You just want to be able to communicate!! So, charades it is.

This is what you look like after 20 straight hours of traveling. Scary, huh?

We took a wild ride to the hotel. I'm not sure there are speed limits, stopping at red lights is optional, and I'd like to choke the life out of whoever invented the car horn.

This was all our luggage piled in the back.

The hotel was nice! In the morning Megan and I went downstairs to get a luggage cart thing, and the little bell hop boy came running after us. Apparently we aren't allowed to do anything for ourselves. He also didn't understand that we had to go to two rooms, ours then Kate's, so while Megan stayed with our luggage downstairs, I ran upstairs to help Kate with hers.

The view outside our window at 4:30 am.

She had to hold the plug in the wall, otherwise it just fell out. Hilarious.

No caption needed.

When we got back to the airport to meet up with our group, we got some food. I had these breadsticks that tasted like Hawaiian sweet rolls. So good! The rest of our group arrived a couple hours later and then we got on a bus to head to Changzhou! It was about a three hour bus ride which wasn't terrible. The drive made me a little sad though. Seeing some of the places that these people live in broke my heart, and I know I haven't even seen the bad stuff yet.

Half of the Shanghai airport

The other half of the airport. Pudong is it's own city.

Excited to finally be on the way to Changzhou!

The Shanghai skyline is literally miles and miles and miles long. That's it way back there in the distance.

 When we arrived we unpacked a little and then headed to dinner. Ohhhmahgosh it was the best thing ever. Maybe it was because from Tuesday to Friday I had only had 2 meals, but I'm going to assume it really was that awesome.

This brings me to this morning where I'm sitting on my piece of plywood bed. Breakfast was kind of a wake up call. I don't even know what it was and therefore can't exactly describe. There will be days where I go hungry. I also figured out why Americans lose weight when they come to China. I probably only ate like 150 calories, if that, at breakfast, and then had to walk up five flights of stairs to get back to my room. Eat 150, burn 500. Nice.

Walking around campus this morning we saw a few chinese people walking around, I can't even tell you how happy they were to see us. It's the same with the cafeteria ladies. They are so stinkin' cute and want to do whatever they can to please us. It makes their entire day when we wave at them. Why can't Americans be more friendly?

My home for the next four months