The Flight and First Day

We're all here and safe!  Everyone's baggage arrived, although one student did pick up the wrong bag.  Luckily, someone brought her correct bag to her host family's house, so it got fixed rather quickly.  The flight was long! Luckily, I did manage to sleep a little, and I watched several movies--many of which I had already seen.  I saw all or some of: The Descendants, The Artist, J. Edgar, Hugo, New Year's Eve, and My Week With Marilyn.  We had three meals and several snacks, too.  The first meal was a choice of pizza or dim sum.  I felt weird about getting the pizza until I saw every other person--including the native Chinese people next to me--getting it, too.  That made me feel better. 

After 14 hours of butt-numbing sitting, we finally arrived at the Pudong Airport.  It was about 7:30 PM. shanghai time.  We were met by the teachers from Shanghai High School No. 4 ,and they herded us to a shuttle bus that would take us to the school.  It was about an hour-long trip, and I sat next to Dongping, who will be my travel companion for most of the trip.  She is an English teacher, so her English is quite good.  She pointed out sights to us as we drove to the school.

Once at school, the students met their host families and left for the evening.  Tim and I went to our hotel and got settled into our rooms.  His three friends from Taiwan had flown in to hang out with him over the weekend.  They asked me to come out with them.  I was really tired, but these girls were so nice, and I wanted to see what a Chinese karaoke place was like.  We went to "Party World," which was surreal.  It was basically this huge office building with private rooms.  They brought us dumplings, beer, and whisky.  I barely had anything to eat or drink, but  I sure don't feel great today.  One of the girls had so much to drink that she passed out, and when I insisted that we should take her home, they just laughed and said she'd be fine.  They kept checking her breathing to make sure she was still alive.  To me, that's a good sign of when it's time to go home.  For them, though, that was just the beginning of a good karaoke night.   I only got about four hours of sleep, because we had to be to the school at 8:00.  I'm glad that I went, though.  It was such a strange place.  I liked the Tawainese girls a lot.  They are so nice and wanted me to teach them how to "pop"--their word for hip hop dancing.  Why they thought I would know how to do that is beyond me.  They kept saying I was pretty, so tall and skinny, and that I look just like Nicole Kidman!  That made me laugh.  I look NOTHING like Nicole Kidman.  I don't even have red hair, which to me, would at least be some starting point of resemblance.