Flights and Apologies; March 5th, Friday

So the first lesson that I learned in China is that Google is censored and you cannot access any google websites while you are in the country. Therein lies the rub with this blog. I couldn't access anything, so a big shoutout to Chase Jones for setting up the blog post to let everybody know about the technological problems that we were having.

Now onto the trip....

Lots and Lots of flights today, starting with the 4am flight to New York, where we joined our trans-pacific plane for the 16 hour flight to Shanghai. Traveling is a grind, and even with some sleep enhancers, I still managed to watch a few movies and read a couple of books. We flew over the North Pole and it was my first time to see the Northern Arctic ice and Canada. When we landed in Shanghai, it was rainy and cold, exactly how the weather in Athens was when we left. As far as geography, Shanghai is about level with Atlanta and Beijing is about equal to New York City. Once we were settled in our hotel, we showered and freshened up to get ready for our traditional Chinese dinner. the restaurant was the yacht club on "the Bund" the bank of the River that ran through the middle of the city. Shanghai's layout is very similar to that of London with the Thames running down the center of the city. It was 12 courses of all sorts of interesting vegetable mixes, fish, even jellyfish. Our first taste of the actual Asian cuisine.

Chinese tables are large and round with a lazy Susan in the middle where all of the dishes are placed and rotated around where everyone gets a little of everything. It would be "family style" except that normally I associate that with comfort type food and this was far from that cuisine. It was many people's first real attempt with chopsticks and despite our age, we still lack the fine motor skills to make it work with small pieces of rice. One key to Chinese dining is to never clean your plate, because that will make your host think that he could not provide enough food for you. Also, with the central dishes, you should never completely empty that container either. All in all it was a good first taste, I stuck with rice, but I branched out to try pretty much everything; gotta give everything a shot once.

This crazy blue guy is Haibo...he is the mascot for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 (The World's Fair)...he reminded us of a Gumby meets Izzy character.  His image was all over the city, it was not to be forgotten that about 20 million people were going to be visiting this huge metropolis in just a few short months...more on all this later.

Until then, love you all and hope you are safe stateside...glad you're finally getting to read this blog.