If you can’t tell by the title, I honestly can’t believe it’s only been two days! I arrived in China Monday night and orientation started bright and early the next day. We’ve been so busy yesterday and today that it feels like we’ve been here for a week. Everything is just so new to me that I just want to take in as much as I can.

So how was that flight?

Between only getting three hours of sleep before heading to the airport and then going on a 16 hour flight, I somehow managed to stay awake for the whole thing. I think it was because the plane had movies and tv shows to watch during the flight. I managed to watch two movies and too many episodes of NCIS.

16 hours later after I made it to Hong Kong I had the wonderful experience of having my plane being delayed an hour and a half. I already had a two hour layover and I found that I’m not one to wait too long between flights. Although the Hong Kong airport was AMAZING (so many stores that I couldn’t even believe were in an airport like fancy clothes, handbags, jewelry and even a Disney store….let me repeat that…A DISNEY STORE!!) I realized that I just get too excited about getting to my destination and I can’t wait for too long. Also I realized that once you’ve seen the whole airport there’s not much to do after; who would’ve thunk? But once I was on my connecting flight to China I finally realized how tired I was. They gave us food and I was asleep soon after.

Bye Hong Kong!

Look at that sunset

Fast forward a bit

After meeting some CIEE people at Pudong airport, we took a bus to the dorm on campus. Once I got there I met my host mom and she took us to her apartment. With my home stay I’m living with three people (grandma, mom and daughter) and it’s been interesting. My host mom speaks English so that helps when I don’t know certain words but my host grandma doesn’t. Considering I’ve taken 5 semesters of Chinese I’m actually not doing too bad at speaking with her, but I don’t always understand what the daughter is saying. She’s 8 years old so it’s like talking with any other 8 year old except I’m trying to do this in Chinese and she only knows a little English but it’s been fun.

Alsoooo, the apartment is 20 minutes from campus and I’ve actually managed to figure out how to get to and from campus within the two days I’ve been here. I think that’s an accomplishment! But one thing I noticed here while trying to get around is that the drivers just do their own thing. I don’t think I’ve had so many cars drive so close to me while I’m crossing the street or walking around campus.

just walking around campus

And we’re still typing

So far orientation hasn’t been too bad. I already knew a few people from previous Chinese classes at Penn State so that made things a little easier when I went around to talk to people. I’ve met a bunch of new people and we’ve all added each other on WeChat. WeChat is a messaging app that’s used here so we all got it to talk to each other. Even with orientation going on, there are already events being planned. Tomorrow morning I’m going to Zhenru Temple for the lantern festival. I’m not too sure what to expect but it should be pretty cool. The only thing is that I have to get up super early (we have to meet at 7am!) and I’ve been hit by that whole jet lag thing. If I’m not busy doing something, I get pretty tired.

And on that note I should head to bed and try and get some sleep. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings in this update and I’ll see you at the next blog post!

Location: Shanghai, China