Thursday, February 16, 2017

Moving to Changzhou

Tuesday morning we quickly finished up our packing, and headed off with Bailey's mom to the Salt Lake City airport!  We said goodbye to our beautiful mountains, as we won't see them again until the summer.


Our first flight was to Seattle.  In Seattle we grabbed a quick lunch and hopped on our 12 hour flight to Shanghai!  It was a long flight, but really not as bad as we expected.  Yeah, we were kind of squished, and yeah there was a fight on the plane that almost made us have to reroute to Anchorage to drop off the troublemaker (he had tried to steal the watch right off of someone's wrist??), but all in all it wasn't too bad.  We got plenty of food and snacks, and enjoyed the time to watch our own little TVs.

We were exhausted by the time we made it to Shanghai.  By then we had gathered as a little group of ILP volunteers, which made everyone feel more comfortable.


The bus ride from Shanghai to Changzhou was very long.  Probably about three hours.  We all slept and froze at the same time, and finally we made it to campus.  It was a blessed sight.

We basically skipped a whole day, as we landed in Shanghai on the night of the 15th.  We were given today to settle in, to unpack and explore the city.  We needed water ASAP, because the school forgot to order us some jugs, so it was off to the supermarket for many of us!  Just going to the market was an adventure, it was so fun to see all of the Chinese treats and things!


We also explored our campus.  It is super nice!  It is gated so we feel super safe here.  We have to check in and out with the security guards (including one who hit on me - very awkward.  Anyone know how to say in Mandarin, "the guy next to me is my husband"?) every time we leave.  One of my favorite parts of campus is the garden! It is so cute and there's always this little gardener out there picking food for the cafeteria.  Our coordinator told us that we are welcome to pick and eat whatever we'd like!


So far we love it here!  I can't believe how big our city is, we have yet to find the downtown area.  But we have already made some friends and found some cool places.  I can't wait to discover everything we can during our time here!

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