China, day 1

Whew! What a crazy adventure of a trip! After 2 days of traveling, I am finally here in my little hotel room in Nanjing, China--my little home for the next 5 weeks. I will give you the rundown of the travel adventure:
Day 1: leave Portland airport at about 2pm, arrive in Tokyo/Narita approximately 10 hours, 2 and a half movies, one short lived nap and a scrabble game later. The Tokyo airport was amazing. There was an oxygen bar and a massage place, as well as a shower you could pay $5 USD to use for 30 minutes. One of the women I'm traveling with opted for the shower, several for the oxygen bar, a few for bowls of noodles. I went for the shopping and origami museum:

Origami village Origami cranes Origami dinosaurs! (my favorite)

Then, after the 2 hour layover and 2.5 hour flight from Tokyo to Shanghai, we collected our luggage and made our slow and unsteady way in a bus that smelled like smoke and smog to our hotel in Shanghai, about an hour or so from the airport. By this time it's around midnight China time, and about 6am Portland time. Needless to say, we were all exhausted and a little bit slaphappy. Here are some pictures of the Shanghai hotel.


The hotel building front, and two views from our room on the 20th floor.

In the morning was an incredible breakfast with the best congee I have ever had (like a rice porrige), humbao, dumplings, fried rice, sweet potato, boiled eggs and bok choy. YUM! Sorry, I didn't get to take any food pictures, I was too busy eating. Next was the reloading of the bus with all of us and our things, and a bus ride two blocks down until they realized that the bus was having a "problem" and they needed some time to fix it. So, we all got off and wandered about town. First we tried to go to a teashop right across the street, but it wasn't open until noon and it was about 10:30. So, we continued on to the Puhuang river, which we could only sort of see, but it was a nice walk none the less.


The bus that wouldn't, the teashop that wasn't, the bridge and river that were almost.

Some of the grit and some of the beauty of Shanghai. We got caught in the monsoon and bought colorful umbrellas for 8 quai (about $1).

By the time we had walked back to the bus, all was well and working and we got on for our trip to Nanjing, which took about 4 hours and some of my intestional integrity. We stopped for the bathroom and lunch at a truckstop where we tried to eat a cafeteria style. Lunch that was so salty and laced with MSG that most of us politely ate the rice and bites of the vegetable (whatever it was) and moved on. (No food pics here either, be thankful)

We arrived safely in Nanjing, and checked into our hotel. After a small reprieve from the travel and people shuttling, we met to walk to "bike street" and buy bikes for all 24 of us for the next 5 weeks. This took about 2 hours. My little fixie bike ended up costing me $215 quai, about $35USD and says "happy bike" on the side. I am totally in love with it and already scheming about how to get it back to Portland. Riding is an incredible experience, as there are about a million cyclists, mopeds, pedestrians, buses and taxis all competing for the same piece of road among poorly regulated traffic. There is a lot of honking and bell ringing. Here is happy bike
and some pictures of us this evening.


bike trying and buying---Happy Bike!!! Happy me! Happy Christine!

We locked all 23 bikes together outside the restaurant tonight, here we are all waiting to get seated for dinner.

So, that's it for now! Check back for more later--I'm going to try for at least once every evening, or every other. love!