Ni Hao!

(Aprx 13:30 china time) So, here we are! Pudong Airport in Shanghai China. Because we had to gather all of our stuff and were the last off the plane we had mentally prepared for the crowds, pushing, shoving, protecting our possessions – we are on high alert so to speak. So after picking our stroller up at the gate and leaving the terminal area we were surprised to find an almost empty airport. It was just us and a handful of people. Where did all of the people on our plane go? I mean it was kinda eerie. Not at all what I had imagined. We gathered our 12 bags – strapped them together and proceeded to Customs. It was so funny to me because there are two lines “to declare” and “nothing to declare” – but there was no process or force to make someone go through the declaration process, at least that I could see. After we declared nothing’ we began to look for our guide, Brett Isis from Teaching Nomad. He is the recruiter that found the opportunity at Etonkids for Andrew.

Bret arranged a taxi for us to take us to the train station. However,  after loading our bags we were told that we would need to pay an extra baggage fee to board the train and while that wasn’t much, the thought of dragging these bags in and out of transportation mediums was well just not going to happen. So we took the taxi all the way to Nanjing a 3.5 hour ride. Just what we were hoping for after a 15.5 hour plane ride!!

~Somewhere along the way we stopped for a bathroom break and a few drinks ( 3-20oz cokes and 2-20oz sprites all for about $3.17)~

The taxi was a bit costly at about 350 usd but in the grand scheme of things a great deal (by US comparison) considering the distance. It ended up working out for us in the end. Our driver who was from Shanghai got lost and had to keep stopping for directions to our hotel. Once the we got into Nanjing it didn't really bother us because it was so exciting to see all the brightly lit sites of the city. Plus for those of you who have never driven or taken a ride in China its like an NYC cab ride on HGH!! By the time we got to the hotel we were so tired, hungry and had really just ran out of steam. It was now close to 20:45. Our hotel room was really small but the manager explained to us that the next night we would be moved to the large executive suite the next night. After getting settled we headed out into an unknown chinese neighborhood looking for food. Needless to say that night we ended up eating pizza at a local shop who’s English name was “Pizza Home”. The menu read “We came from Pizza Hut but we can do it better”… It was pretty good but again, we were hungry and tired so I think that helped. Once we got back to the room we all showered and within 10 minutes I would say we were all having the deepest sleep of our life!