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Published: June 25th 2011
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As of right now the date is Saturday, June 25th, 2011 and it has been a busy week already. Usually I would have written in my blog already by now but things have been happening one right after the other so I haven’t had time to write. So let me start from the beginning.
On Wednesday morning I got up at 5:10am EST and quickly got dressed, showered and said goodbye to my sisters. My dad drove me to the airport where during the car ride I received a call from United Airlines stating that my flight was cancelled! I panicked a little but it turned out fine as they put me on another flight where after I connected in Chicago and left for Shanghai.
My flight to Shanghai was very good. It was 14 hours in duration and I was next to a fellow Disney English employee, Gabrielle. So when the plane touched down it was Thursday afternoon.
The plane took an exciting route to Shanghai. We flew over Canada and into Alaska where we were next to Mt. McKinley, the largest mountain in North America. Then we flew over the Bering Strait and headed into Russia.
Gab and I on the infamous Nanjing Road
more photos to come as soon as the weather is ncier. From there we headed south to Japan and across the Yellow Sea to China. We landed at around 1:15pm China time.
The Disney English employees were met with an official Disney English bus and that took us to the hotel. The bus traipsed us through Shanghai where I was simply in awe about the sheer size of the city. It’s no wonder that this is the most populated city in the world.
We then stepped outside the bus and checked into our hotel. We all said that we would meet at 6pm to get some dinner after.
A quick note about the humidity: it is unbearable. Michigan’s humidity has nothing on Shanghai’s. You can cut the air in half – that’s how thick it is. You definitely need a shower after you come in from the outside.
Anyways, dinner that night was quite the experience. We turned left out of our hotel and found nothing but authentic Chinese cuisine having no idea that if we had turned right that we would’ve found more tourist friendly restaurants. Nevertheless, it was interesting and set the tone for the trip. We picked a diner where everything was in Mandarin
and we had no idea what we were ordering. I picked something that looked good in the picture but didn’t look that way in real life. I didn’t even touch the meat. It looked terrible. But the vegetables and rice was good. Of course, this meal required the use of chopsticks and I am terrible at using them. So the waitress saw me struggle and brought over a spoon.
So that concludes my first day or days of my travels.
Friday, June 24th, 2011 started out with a meeting with other Disney English employees. It was only 3 hours and consisted of cultural expectations and such and the purchasing of cell phones.
The rest of the day was spent exploring the city of Shanghai. We started with going to Zhongshan Park and found ourselves at the Bund where we oversaw the future of the world with the Pudong skyline. It was during this time that I felt a terrible sickness coming on. I decided that it was time to head back to the hotel. It was horrible! lol
On Saturday, June 25th, 2011 a big group of us went to the old town in Shanghai. We spent
a lot of time in the Yu Garden and the City of Gods Temple. It was very nice. The Temple was the highlight of my day because I have never been or even seen a Buddhist temple before so witnessing a new form of worship was very interesting
And of course, my sickness interrupted my day several times so that was the only negative aspect of the last 2 days.
So that should wrap it up with my first week in China!
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