First Night Shanghai

Hey everyone.

Good flights over all. We had no problems with getting to our flight to Shanghai in Chicago, nor did our luggage. The captain on the plane even announced that the luggage from that plane made it on board and we were ready for take off! ha-ha. So all went well with that. I even had almost an entire row of 6 seats to myself ( I was at one end and one guy at the other end.) So that was very cool. I was able to actually lay down for part of the flight and sleep some. The Ambien did alright. Didn't totally knock me out...but it made the flight much much much easier.
It didn't seem like 14 hours (13 actually we arrived an hour early!!!)

Now...Shanghai.....

Wow what a hot, humid, steamy, smoggy, AMAZING city!!!! It is interesting. I tried to send you pictures here and to upload them to my photobucket site and the internet here wouldn't let me send through my google email...but MICROSOFT OUTLOOK from my school account will let me...WEIRD!
*(It finally let me upload pictures in the emails, and on this blog)Anyway...as you can imagine it is something else here in Shanghai. It is around 3:00AM here. I went to bed around 8ish PM here w/ some jet lag...and now can't sleep so you are getting this! ha-ha.

The meal we had last night was really good. Some sort of green beans, cabbage, lemon glazed fried chicken, and a lot of other stuff....(those were my favorites).

We have a GREAT tour guide. The local guide is very good as well.



Oh...the pollution...
you cannot imagine! Within a few hours of being here I could feel it...and the heat just adds to it. Itchy eyes...heavy lungs...ugh!!!! About what I figured it would be...but nasty stuff. You'll see the haze in the pictures...even at NIGHT. Nasty.

Other than that...I really like it. The people here (even in a larger city like Shanghai) are drawn to the Americans... We were taking a group picture earlier...and of course (as you will see when you see the group picture at some point) I'm in the front acting a fool....all the Chinese run up with their cameras and start snapping pictures of us....ha-ha. Sheeeesh. I'll close. Good stuff so far. I'm tired, but having a good time and it has been a really good start.




(1st picture Me with Shanghai skyline day shot, 2nd picture I took as we walked back from dinner..night skyline of Shanghai, 3rd picture is a street scene from Shanghai, 4th picture would be me on top of our hotel..the observation deck)