Arrival

We all arrived in Shanghai at the Shanghai Pudong International Ariport on May 7th. Most of us had been travelling for 15 hours or more. We were picked up at the airport by the IPO staff who are the friendliest and nicest people I have ever met. They put us on a bus and we that's how we made the 45 minute journey back to campus. When we got to campus, we were welcomed by our buddies. Buddies are local JI students who volunteered to help us out with anything we might need help with. They showed us to our dorms, how to get into our dorms, how to get into our rooms, where the bathrooms were and handed us a folder which had our ID cards, metro cards, metro schedule, amazing guide book and other things which would keep us all from being absolutely clueless and being lost all the time.

My room is fine. It's small and cozy but it works since I barely spend anytime in my room. All the beds have nets around them to keep the mosquitoes out at night. That's a relief since I've heard horror stories about the mosquitoes. The room has an air conditioner too.

After setting down my bags, I had my first experience in the dorm bathrooms. The toilets are squatters! There is no toilet paper in the bathrooms either! I have to carry my own roll every time I have to go to the bathroom! The only soap in the bathrooms is the bar soap which everyone else uses. I quickly added hand soap dispensers to my "must buy" list. The showers aren't straightforward either. You have to pay for hot water (what?!). We were all given shower cards which you have to put in the meter that's in the shower every time you want hot water. The machine then starts counting down from 5 and charges 0.03 Yuan every 5 seconds. Needless to say, you quickly learn how to take super quick and efficient showers.

Shanghai is 12 hours ahead of Ann Arbor, so I was up bright and early the next day i.e. Saturday. Also, the sun rises really early in Shanghai so that didn't help me get into the sleep cycle even though I was extremely tired from my 15+ hour flight the previous day. Saturday was our orientation and also the first time that I was going to meet everyone in the program. We all met in front of the girls' dorm and were led by the IPO staff kids Joe, Amanda and Shelly to the JI building where we had cereal, milk, PB&J sandwiches and juice/coffee for breakfast. We also met the advisor Czahreena De Leon who, we quickly learned, has an endless supply of energy. She is so active and happy all the time. We all already love her! Following breakfast, we played an ice breaker, listened to the orientation presentation where they told us a lot about campus, going downtown, where to eat, where to shop etc. We were also told that we had a curfew and had to be back in the dorms by 12 am or face being locked out or face the wrath of the dorm mothers who have the keys to the dorm doors. We call our dorm mothers "ayee". I am very hesitant to get on my ayee's bad side because she does my laundry for me. I'm scared she might put ink in my clothes when I go to put them in the washer. However, so far so good. The ayees are still very nice and my clothes are ink-free.

After orientation, we took a tour of the campus which is HUGE! Bigger than the U of M Central Campus. I have a horrible sense of direction and after the first 5 minutes of the tour, I was just blindly following the group around without having any idea of where I was. I knew that I was definitely going to get lost on my way to class on Monday. However, the tour was great because the campus is so beautiful; there's a river and a lake and it is full of trees. Since, basketball it very popular here, there are a lot of bball courts. Tennis and ping pong are also popular and we saw courts for all 3 all over campus. I forgot to carry my camera with me on the first day so I don't have any pictures but I'll steal some off my friends and post them here.

After the tour ended, our buddies picked us up to go shopping. We headed to a store that was a 15 minute walk away from campus. A lot of the places in Shanghai are very misleading. The buildings look old and run down from the outside but when you enter, it is amazing! The building we entered, did not look very impressive on the outside, but inside it was really nice! The store had everything from brand new laptops to international brand washing machines, from detergent to fresh fruits and veggies, from cell phones to shoes. it had EVERYTHING! I bought a really cheap cell phone for the 2 months that I'm going to spend here in China. My buddy had to do all the talking since no one there spoke English and I don't speak any Mandarin. I picked out a 178 Yuan ($26) Samsung phone which has 2 games, calculator, alarm, calling and texting. What a luxury compared to my iPhone ... not! I quickly got the rest of the stuff that I needed for my room. I found green tea flavored and strawberry flavored oreo cookies in the store. Obviously I got way too interested and ended up buying the strawberry ones. They were yum!

After shopping, we were all really tired from all the walking we went to go rest before our Shanghai tour the next day. And what a day that was! Will include details about our adventures from Shanghai in my next post! Few pictures included below.

Nayana

My China phone and my USA phone. My China phone has a snowman sticker on it so that I don't mix it up with other people's phones. A ton of people bought this same exact phone.
My Room! We have to hang out our clothes to dry since there aren't any dryers here, only small washers.