Wow!! My first 8 hours in China were a whirlwind. After the longest flight I have ever been on (about 13 hours) we landed. It was actually a very relaxing flight. I sat in the bulk head (so tons of leg room), in the middle group of seat and middle seat was empty, so SCORE!!! haha. The guy sitting in ‘next’ to me was from the bay area and has lots of friends teaching in China and he comes over here all the time. He gave me great little tid-bits to help me in my time here and some advice on travelling in Asia. We covered these topics in the first hour of the flight so the remainder of the flight was sleeping and watching movies: Pirates 4, Bridesmaids and Thor….good times.
Ok so the whirlwind part: after landing at 4:07pm local time I got my baggage. Much to my frustration the handle on my suitcase was broken during the flight someway and won’t come up…so I had to wheel it around by the fabric top handle. It’s not too bad since the suitcase is so tall, but it is uncomfortable.
My boss, Shishi, was to meet me at the airport so she could take me back to Cangzhou (my city). For some reason we didn’t connect for 2 hours. I was looking for her and she was there looking for me, but for some reason we never saw each other. It was really hard for a while…..but it was great talking to Dad for a few mins (to let them know I made it and to check my email to verify that I told Shishi the right landing date). Well about 20 min after that I found Shishi!!! It was great, she was so warm and friendly. We were immediately talking non-stop. But since it had taken so long to meet up we had less than 2 hours to get the main train station in Beijing (in rush hour!). So we were running like crazy people: airport shuttle train, tube line 1, tube line 4 then 20 min left to get to the other side of the train station and get onto the Cangzhou train…and of course we are doing this with all of my luggage…needless to say we were both so exhausted by the time we got on the train. The train is an hour to Cangzhou, and I slept about 45 min of that.
My first impression of Cangzhou was lights. There is a main street leading from the train station into town, and there are these huge, old style, street lights guiding you in. There are high buildings everywhere. And since I came in at night everything was lit up. Not like New York or LA but a ton of lights. On every block was a group of trees that had lights on them, it was pretty. The buildings all have multi-colored lights on the sides…even the taxis had light tubes around their back windows.
Shishi took me to dinner around 10. I was so tired, but not wanting to be rude didn’t say anything. Eating was en event because I am horrible at working chopsticks, and they don’t have forks, so it was funny. But I managed with my noodles just fine.
Right now I am at Shishi's apartment. She wants me to stay here while I get orientated in the city. And it is very nice, but I really want to unpack. But Shishi is very nice, and her son Fenfen is as well. He came in and saw me this morning before going to school and asked if I can have lunch with him instead of him eating at school.
Well I am going to try to get another hour of sleep….so tired, but the dog Beano woke me up this morning around 6:30 and I wanted to check my email..and now it's 8, so about another hour should do it :)
No comments:
Post a Comment