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Hello from Nanjing. It's been a crazy couple of days and a total adventure getting here with an
emergency landing before even getting out of the U.S. The flight over was pretty fantastic. We went straight up over the North Pole through Russia and Mongolia into China. It was a beautiful clear day and I was able to see the land and ice below. Pretty amazing.
Arrived in Beijing and needed to transfer to an Air China flight to Nanjing, except Air China would not let us board their flight since United messed up everything when our flights were rescheduled so we spent a few hours running around Beijing airport getting passed off between Air China and United like volleyballs, it was pretty funny. In the end we were ticketed to get on the flight to Nanjing literally 15 minutes before take-off and had to make a mad dash through the airport following the Air China rep through VIP customs and onto the flight...which was another whole experience...Chinese pilots are crazy! We dipped and dived our way to Nanjing and then plopped ourselves into a cab that was possibly the scariest drive I've ever experienced in my life - and
yes, this is from the girl who grew up in Peru! Chinese drivers will literally just stop in the middle of the road and back up and turn around against traffic if they need to.
Even though the guide books say Nanjing is one of the most beautiful cities in China, it's hard to see that when everything is covered in a layer of smog. Nanjing has over 5 million people so is by no means a small city. The first two days we spent a lot of time just walking around taking in all the new sights, sounds and smells. Yesterday I got the most amazing foot massage ever and we've been enjoying a lot of the food. There are street vendors everywhere and the food most of the time looks really good! So far I've easily been able to avoid seafood which I'm allergic to.
People here are super friendly, although very few people speak English , I've found that somehow we all manage to communicate and my phrasebook has been like gold. A couple interesting things I've noticed: babies here have a slit in their pants and their butts hang out, it's actually looks kind
of cute. What I've been told is that it's so when they have to "go" their parents just hang them over the sidewalk...hmm...
As most of you know I'm here for a class on Communications on China, we've got some pretty exciting field trips set up visiting the national news agency, a television station and it looks like the Chinese equivalent of Time magazine is going to come and interview us and maybe do a story on our class. Pretty cool huh?
Anyways, sorry for the slightly lame photos but I've been too busy taking everything in and not busy enough snapping photos but I will upload a bunch more tomorrow too. This weekend I'm off to Beijing so should have some cool pics of the Great Wall etc. for you too!
P.S. if any of you get this and don't want it (I used the same list as we had for our Brasil trip just unsubscribe yourself and sorry!).
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Marcela
non-member comment
pole and food
The north pole! That's so cool! I am glad the food is good... :)