Journey to Shanghai

Good morning! Although, I think it's really 6:25 p.m. where you guys are. It's morning here (we are 12 hours different), and I figured I would start my day before the alarm goes off. We are leaving at 8:45 to take a city tour and then go to a museum before visiting an old fishing village in the afternoon.

Getting here was interesting. If you include take off and landing, having to disembark the plane, etc... I think we were on the airplane for a little over 17 hours. The flight attendent told us that this is the second longest flight they make- second only to Bombay or someplace like that. They didn't have vegetarian meals, so I was pretty hungry when I got off the plane. There are only so many goldfish crackers you can eat... But I can't complain. I REALLY lucked out- I was in seat 45F, which was in the first row of a new section and I had LOTS of leg room. I sat next to Chuck, who teaches Enlish at Notre Dame. At one point, two of the other Chattanooga teachers came and sat cross-legged in our "leg space" and we had a little party. I watched 4 or 5 movies, a few TV shows, and listened to ABBA on the in-flight entertainment. I didn't have a window seat, but did get up and peek out of someone else's window to see the cracks in the ice over the Artic. All in all, it wasn't too bad.

We hit the ground running. After customs and picking up our baggage, we road the mag lift to Pudong- the newer section of Shanghai. I took a video out the window, but don't know how to upload it here. Anybody know? Post a comment and tell me if you do!!


When we arrived in Pudong, we went to the Pearl, which was a TV and observation tower. It included a wax museum- which would have been really interesting if I hadn't have been sooooooo tired. After that, we all tried not to fall asleep at dinner. We went to some crazy floating restraunt which was lit up like a giant fish with different color scales. Let me see if I can upload a picture of the fish they served (head and all) at dinner. Again, nothing s vegetarian would eat, so I just picked the veggies out of what they put in front of me!