By the way, Shanghai is acutally Sh "ah" nghai. Who knew?
Family! (:
According to the computer it's 849pm on Sunday, which means 649pm for my friends and fam back home. If you would log onto your emails we could Skyyype... (: It's Monday morning in Shanghai, China. Something about erasing a day from my existence via fling here is really messed up. The day is just.. gone. I had no Saturday, thank you. But I can tell you about Friday and Sunday! Haha.
Friday:
The plan: NYC-Detroit, land at 3, leave at 4. Detroit-Shanghai, land at 7-ish China time, take law firm's car to hotel, go grocery shopping, be in China.
The not-so plan: NYC-Detroit, land at 3: all went surprisingly well. Delta allows not one, but TWO free checked bags internationally. I was a happy camper. I landed in Detroit and booked it down to my gate (since we were boarding in like 10 minutes). I sat patiently, hung out, and finally walked up to the counter and asked if we shouldn't already be boarding (since intl flights are a mandatory 30 minutes prior). The lady gave me a look of extreme pity and lovingly broke the news that our flight was delayed, something about the crew flying too long to be legal, landing in Seattle, and will be here in time for us to board at 11pm.
... ... ... wait, what?! Not leaving until 11?
No, ma'am.
...that's almost 8 hours late.
We sincerely apologize.
...um... okay.. I'll just go sit over there.
She printed me meal vouchers, which I didn't even register until I was already sitting and noticed something in my hand. One for lunch, one for dinner, $6 each. I almost laughed out loud, it was really hard not to let pessimism get the better of me. What can you buy for $6 in an airport? A bottle of water.
This wouldn't have been such an issue, but Michael's flight arrived the same time as mine ...would have. 7 hours earlier, now. He'd have to wait for 7 hours in the airport (which he did) or let me ride a taxi to a hotel we didn't know the Chinese address of. And we'd miss out on the free car there. ...beautiful. Regardless, I had over 7 hours, I might as well eat. I kind of like to sorrow in food.. it helps. So I bought an appetizer and a meal, and pondered over dessert, too. What? I got $6 off... it's like a free appetizer. The food was waaay bigger than I'd imagined, so I took my pasta/comfort food as leftovers and ate it as I sat at my gate for the next few hours. They kept coming over the announcer and apologizing, updating us on the situation (once again!) to tell us that nothing had changed. The guy next to me responded in kind with the F word. I pretty much knew how he felt. At the moment I was contemplating never using Delta again... at least Continental had little TVs... meh. I read Ivanhoe for upwards of 5 hours, stopping once to go buy overpriced, but amazing, chocolates further down the terminal. Of those waiting, about 3% were not Chinese. Haha. Eventually the announcer came on to tell us that our boarding time was pushed back to 12:15, putting us in Shanghai at approximately 3am. ... insert remarks from the guy across from me. Make that 8 hours. At this time I wished I'd called Bubs, since he was about a 2.5 hour drive away... but I didn't know how we would have hung out in the airport or anything, anyway. I had a funky mix of trying-to-be-nice-optimism and anger-pissed-off-i-hate-this going on. So I read Ivanhoe instead of deciding.
When we finally boarded (at 12am) the 747 (HUGE!), I was relieved to see a window by my seat (also known as excellent sleeping mechanism), and a normal, quiet Chinese businessman next to me. Whew. Score. ...never assume anything, people. The cute couple behind me had a baby who, apparently, really hated the take-off. She screamed at an impressive rate of about 50x a minute... not the normal aaaaaaaaahhhh.... It was like aah aaah! Aaah! AAAh!! AAAHHH!!!... repeat for fifteen minutes. Holy cow. It was about at this moment I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or just maintain my normal "I'm sort of okay" face. I had a 13+ hour flight ahead of me, the aforementioned sitting behind me, and I really wished I could have stayed in NY, and I didn't want to live in China. You could call it my worst moment, but I don't know if the ones that came later are worse just because they're 13 hours later and in China... probably.
The flight was really good. This is the break in the pissed off Tiffany of this story. Of 13 hours, I only remember about 4 of them. Whew! The kid in front of me (who liked to bounce in his seat A LOT) ended up sleeping in some way that put his foot through the space between us by the window... random.. and pushed his pillow (those little Delta sudo-pillows?) back to me. Hm... I took the opportunity to double stuff my oversized pillow case with both of our puny pillows, and created a perfect pillow masterpiece. Thank you, thank you. (: Between me and the wall, that pillow gave me almost 10 hours of sleep. Ah, love. LOOVE. The flight service has 2 meals (YAY!) of interestingly good airplane food. Each one had "Western Choice" and a "Chinese Choice" option. Considering the flight was like 97% Chinese, I was amazed at how few of them liked their own food. ...just saying. The first meal was Chicken with a demi-glace sauce (<3!), stuffing?! (<3!), carrots (yay!), fruits (yay!), roll (yay!...okay..) salad (eh..), and spinach (avoid). Awesome. By the time the second meal got to the 57th row, the Chinese option was the only one left. Me: Do you not have any of the pasta left? Flight attendant: You'll like the [ginger] chicken. Me (to self): What the.. how on earth would you know? I really doubted I was going to like it, which is interesting later on. Anyway.
Sunday:
We landed in Shanghai at 2 am (early! Yaay!) and got through customs surprisingly easily. Did you know they do video face recognition to your passport? Hm... Michael was so cute, after reading hours of Jane Austen and sleeping when possible, he looked very handsome and happy to see me. I was somewhat glad we'd flown separately, so I could have Tiffany moments without sharing them out loud. It had been hard for me, but making it hard for him would have gotten us nowhere.
As we walked out, a taxi driver offered to take us to our location for 250RMB.. 6.4RMB/1 dollar. Michael's company had told him it should cost about 140, so we refused and walked out to the curb service. The lady gave us a "well, if you're that stupid" scoff.. made me a little nervous. Our driver didn't speak English (something I would find is very common.. crap) at all. We were very surprised to see the ticker at 4.7RMB/km go up.. and up... and up... above 140, above 200 (which is all we had at this point), and not stop until about 240. ...eeerm... This is what we have. Here's a $5 dollar bill to make up for it. He didn't understand the exchange rate, and demanded more from us in confused Chinese. So we got hosed. Okay. Fine.
We got into the lobby at 4AM, and felt hosed again when they requested 2000RMB for deposit and 300RMB for the internet for 21 days. ... that's almost $400 unexpected dollars, and it's 4AM. Let's just do this, we have no choice... we paid our (what do they call the guy that does your luggage? porter?) in dollars, which is illegal, but he took it. We then did an inspection of our apartment, which is lovely, see link: http://www.
5AM Shanghai time, and At LAST I was ready to collapse onto our bed and sleep. I sat down... and just busted up laughing. The bed was about as soft as your average ironing board. No joke. I didn't sink hardly at all, despite the sheets/covers/etc. Apparently this is very normal for China. Michael (hard mattress lover) = very happy.
I woke up early, since the plane sleep made up for a lot that night, feeling a little off. I attributed it to my fear of being in Shanghai, and stayed in bed as long as possible. Not that the bed was comfy or anything.. I just didn't feel up to the day as of yet. When I stood up, I was a little nauseous and light-headed, but I still thought nothing of it. I had slept with wet hair, for only 3 hours, after a 13 hour flight and an 8 hour delay, and we were in Shanghai... a little nauseous is kind of expected. Michael asked if I felt like we should stay home, but I figured skipping church is never a good idea when you need as much help as I did. I tottered downstairs, we got our destination in Chinese (yees!) and we walked to the Chinese Ntl Bank to change the rest of our dollars to RMB. I am awesome at getting taxis. Just a note. Not that it's that hard, or that much of an accomplishment, but something about being 5'10 and American is good for getting taxis. As we drove to church (in a large business tower in Shanghai, 2nd floor conference room.. whoa), I laid my head down as Michael remarked how Soviet-like the building complexes were. He tried pointing things out to me, but looking out at the zooming buildings wasn't doing much for my nausea.
It was about the time I stood up out of the taxi that I realized I was really not okay. Without explaining (mostly unable to), I ran into the building, and hoped the bellman understood the my frantic "bathroom?". He pointed, confused, and I ran for it. I swear, ~100 yards has never been so far. My body really really wanted to soil their lovely tile floors; it tried repeatedly, me running with a covered mouth to prevent a huge scene. I made it to the restroom, and ran to the first thing I saw, a sink, before I could finally take my hands away. Can you say instant relief? I surveyed the damage. Hair: alright. Shirt: better. Face: not so lucky (due to my hands thwarting the previous attempts). The Chinese cleaning ladies that came in after me were very nice, despite not understanding a word I said, and brought me toilet paper for my face. Score one for humanity, no language barriers needed. It must have been a very strange scene to them. Honestly, I'm blaming the airplane food.
The look on Michael's face when I walked out was the sweetest/saddest thing I'd ever seen. He makes this involuntary puppy face: "If I'd known you were so sick I wouldn't have even let you leave the room... do you want to go back now?" I assured him I was fine (instant relief, remember?), and we slipped in to Sacrament meeting upstairs a little late. I'll have to post pictures after next week, since we didn't bring the camera. It looks like this: http://www.colliersid.
Also see the attached google map image, the conference center where we meet is on the right, a large circular room.
Church was awesome, and in English! Oh, heavenly. The speakers were of Chinese descent.. but Australian. Interesting. The ward picks all the happy hymns, like Scatter Sunshine. Fun. (: Sunday school was bueno (about the washing of feet ordinance and the last supper). I'm constantly reminded how amazing Michael is whenever we go to church together. He makes all these little insightful side comments to me, references, stories, corrections on the speakers sometimes. Me: Dude, you should share this out loud, too. He did, and the teacher was amazed. "Oh. Actually, that's next in the lesson.. yeah.." I love my husband. Relief society was bueno (about DC 89 and the word of wisdom.. it made me want to drink more OJ), and life was all good. We gravitated towards Reid Smoot and his wife, who are here and in the ward. Very nice people. I find it somewhat hilarious that the Smoots have made such a huge company out of Zoobies. Spell? http://
I LOVE it. It's like a pillow pet, but it's a pillow blanket pet. Zoobie. Cracks me up. Reid lives and works here solely based off of this business and how well it does in Shanghai. Jacob lives off of it in Utah. Apparently they're a huge hit. So cute! I like Lencho the lion. Michael has an alligator one (Kojo the croc) back home. We should get Alicia the pig and Momma the black bear. (My mind trails on: And Don the dog and Tara the zebra and Jamie the cow and....)
I caught the taxi home (I'm a master, I'm telling you), and our driver spoke zero English, again. Not normally an issue, but she also didn't know where we were going. During the drive she called her friend and asked directions. Haha. Even in Chinese, that's obvious. We did a little grocery shopping when we got home, and bought some OJ (see, the WoW talk totally inspired me), crackers, cookies, sprite (I had been sick), water (tap=a no-go here), and 2 noodle packages-like Ramen, but 10x better. So good.. I'm going to go buy it in bulk today. (: I decided to see what I could make of our bed/ironing board, and found a spare comforter, which I folded into a bed mat. Score! It was almost big enough to be my mat and my covers, so I had to try snuggling into it. Bad plan. Snuggling into something comfy after all of the above = instant sleep. Michael woke me up to our spicy beef ramen (amazing, like I said), and then let me go back to sleep. He joined me later just to say something.. I don't remember what, and fell asleep, too. Haha. We both slept through our dinner appointment at the Smoot's. Oops! They were really nice about it, and let us reschedule for a time when we'd be move alive.
So we went walking for our dinner. Michael loves to walk in big cities, I tend to hole-up inside. He's good for me. We walked a few blocks and picked the most crowded of the casual restaurants on the street. Michael wanted a picture menu, since we both have 0 Chinese, and I wanted it to be good food for sure. We're kind of like sore thumbs here, and everyone stares at least a little when we walk anywhere. People on the street, in the restaurant, in the hotel. It's almost fun. Anyway, sat down and started trying to figure out the limited pictures they had on the menu, and this cute skinny Chinese guy gets up from his date and says (in English!): "Excuse [me], I [am] not very good [at] English, but maybe I [can] help you?" So cute. The fact that he can say even that much makes him a master here. He would have us write our English words (like "noodle") into his blackberry-type phone, and translate them to Chinese. He let us try his food, and then ordered for us at the counter. Love him. We got two plates of soy/saucey noodles with cabbage (bok choy?), and 6 of the house uberfamous specialty beef steamed dumplings. Unfortunately, we also got chopsticks. ...hm. I will say that I put forth a valiant effort, and noodles are really really hard to pick up no matter how skilled you may attempt to be. By the way, 2 plates of tasty noodles and 6 dumplings = about $5. Including drinks. Haha. We love it.
Michael and I stayed up till 11, thanks to our earlier naps and both of us still needing to read scriptures and say prayers together. (Kind of odd to have skipped Saturday in our daily routine, there. ...it's like unfortunate cheating. I guess we'll gain that day back when we fly home? Okay.) It's good to stay up late, because otherwise you'll wake up with the sun at about 5 AM. Hm. Let's not. My bed mat was awesome, I managed to sleep on my side, and it was all good.
Monday:
This morning Michael tried the gym that's attached to the hotel (but a separate business...?). He said it's small, but good. We just have to get him gloves so the spiked weights don't rub his hands completely raw. Haha. Gloves.. in China... yeah, that will come eventually. I'm pretty sure he's dying for lack of a gym these past 2 months (with finals, UT, and NY). I'm glad he gets to have one here. Anyway.
I spent the morning writing this email. I love you all. That was sort of anticlimatic, I know. More stories will come from today, I'm sure, but maybe won't take up such a huge email. Eek! Sorry, everyone. (: I am doing well, am excited to eat more beef noodles, and life is good. You should email me back, tell me stories, or add me on Skype. (: Loves!
Tiff
Love reading about your adventures! Keep them coming...but for some reason, I can't view any of your links. Each link requires a log in??
ReplyDeleteI love you Tiff. You make my day :)
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