Shanghai!

Yay! After the most excrutiating plane flight of my life, we finally arrived in Shanghai. Just a note, if you make this flight, bring snacks, because they do not feed you enough. For a 14 hour flight we got lunch, then a few hours later we got a little thing of ice cream and some Asain noodle salad (yucky) and then 1 1/2 hours before the plane landed, we got another meal that tasted just like the lunch. So yeah. The Shanghai Pudong airport is nice. Not adequately air conditioned, but you don't have to stay there long because it's very efficient. They actually opened up more lines to get us through faster which is something you don't see in America usually. Anyways, then we took a cab to downtown Shanghai where our hotel is. By the way, it's freakin' hot and humid here. Summer is not a good time of year to visit, FYI. The taxi drivers don't speak English but luckily Adam had a card with the hotel's address in Chinese on it.

My first impression of China is that the sky is sad. :( You can't see it. I'm not even sure if these people have ever seen a sunrise or sunset in person. Below is a picture of a cool building with a smoggy haze around it:

But the air isn't noxious or anything. I haven't see anyone wearing masks yet. Our hotel is really nice and the bed (although very firm) is really comfortable. Adam and I split an Ambien to help us sleep through the night and man did it work! We have pretty much no jet lag so I recommend it very much because the last time Adam was here it took him three days to get over his jet lag. Here's another picture of a cool building, with not so much smog:

Also, the elevated highways have potted plants hanging from the edges, which I thought was a nice touch. I wonder who waters them...

So today we explored Shanghai and the first thing we went to was the Yu Garden. It's an elusive little garden (actually a very large garden), hidden amongst a bunch of shopping streets. The cab driver dropped us off a few blocks away from it, presumably because he didn't feel like driving through the madness so we couldn't find it until we followed a tourist group. The garden is surrounded on all sides by a big wall, so that they can charge you admission (only $5) but that's why we didn't see it. Here are some pictures from there:

Upon leaving the garden, we were funneled into a long corridor full of shops and at the end there was this giant building:

So we had lunch there! I stupidly left my Chinese phrasebook on the table so now I have to get another one. :(

Then we visited the Shanghai Museum, which is full of cool stuff and it's free! Outside the museum, there are several large statues of lions and one in particular, we thought looked like Smudgie scratching an itch on his neck. If you've met Smudgie, you can totally see the resemblance.

Here's another picture I thought was cool:

For dinner, Cynthia Wei, who works at Guilford Shanghai, picked us up and took us to The Bund, which is a really cool area of Shanghai on the river. Lot's of places to eat and just an awesome atmosphere. We ate at a German Restaurant and it was amazing. I got a picture of the Shanghai skyline at about 7pm but when we left dinner at about 9pm, the buildings were even more lit up. But my camera got all foggy and couldn't take a good picture. So here's the 7pm one:

That's all for now!! Tomorrow we are traveling to Huainan in the afternoon. But I'll have more to say after we see our housing options on Monday.