Ni Hao Shanghai!

Sorry this is late. I couldn't get an Internet connection for the first two days and when I finally did my blog headers were in Chinese and I hadn't figured out how to post until now. Oh well...do you miss me :)

Day One

We arrived in Shanghai on Saturday afternoon. The flight wasn't terrible, but it was a long one. I tried to sleep for most of it, but then you get to a point where you just can't sleep anymore no matter how much you want to. I did get caught up on some movies though. They served three meals on the flight. It was an American flight, but I guess they were in the China spirit. We had chicken and rice for lunch, noodles for snack, and noodles again for dinner (they ran out of lasagna and turkey sandwiches), but I won't complain, everyone said the noodles were better :) Good thing I brought snacks. We arrived at the airport and things were smooth. I got Yuan ($) from the ATM 7 Yuan = 1 Dollar!!! I'm Rich!!!! Our tour guide Rainy met us at the airport and we road the bus back to the hotel, and what an exciting ride it was....the traffic is CRAZY! I'm not really sure what Red and Green lights mean here, and there is no such thing as pedestrian's right-away....no way. There are lots of bikes and scooters, and traffic moves fast. 10 x worse than New York. Man does this put traffic back home into perspective.

As we ride along on the bus, I notice there is a lot of construction going on. There are lots of tall building and there are very little traces of things that you and I might consider Asian architecture. The city is more modern and you can see the transition from Old Shanghai to New Shanghai. The combination of old and new is astonishing and the government even passed a bill to preserve buildings built prior to 1940s. They are preparing for the big China Expo set for 2010. Apparently there is some political mayhem (what a surprise) going on. The Bush Admin pulled the plug on funding a US pavilion for the expo and mandated that US private companies fund it. They has been no success in raising the 60 million dollars required, and there was some mix up with the RFPs for the job so the US might not have a pavilion at the Expo if we can't get out crap together in time. Go figure......even Luxembourg has a pavilion!

We arrive out our hotel. It's nice and very modern. The goal is not to go to sleep so that we can adjust better to the local time here, so a few of us head out to find local cell phones so we can call back home for a cheaper rate. We get directions from the front desk for the "Cyber Market" . The concierge also told us that there was a market nearby and that there might be cell phones there. She wrote it on our card in Chinese. We start out on foot, and head in the most promising direction. We have no idea where we are going, but it's an adventure and we feel like pioneers, so we just go. We stumbled into the market. Not sure if you have ever been to Mexico or Jamaica where there are open peddlers, but here they are everywhere, and they are worse. I learned very quickly how to say No Thank You in Chinese (boo yao shay shay). Sometimes it works and they move on, but mostly they are persistent and it takes 3-4 times of saying no.

Anyway, we walked around for a bit, but were unsuccessful in finding any cell phones, so we head back to the hotel to catch a cab to go to the cyber market. We get to what we think is the cyber market and we end up in a mall, with still no luck of a cell phone, so with not much left to do and when such a huge language barrier we head back to the hotel for dinner. We figure at this point, dinner trumps phone, and we will try again tomorrow. Stay tuned for Day Two....I know it's already Day four, but I'm just too tired to type anymore right now. Pea