One of my favourite parts about traveling (and flying) is landing at the destination. There is nothing like the stomach punch of relief and anxiousness you get when you realize that I am in this place now, and Shanghai treated us to a swift roundhouse to the abdomen. When you are a kid in Canada and you are digging in your sandbox you imagine that you are digging straight to China. And now we are there.
The seven of us were lucky enough to sit together on the plane, but it was mostly uneventful. I did my best to experiment with drug and/or alcohol combinations that would knock me out but was unsuccessful. I would regret not taking friends' advice to medicate myself to be knocked out, but after 30 straight hours awake you really start to learn things about yourself. Dark things.
On our drive we got a taste of the Shanghai of what is to come. Bright lights, busy traffic and skyscrapers e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. You can feel the city the moment you step out of the airport. There is a mild scent of cigarettes and diesel that lingers around most roadways or transportation hubs. An employee was finishing up his cigarette in the bathroom of the airport when I went to grab my luggage. It brings me back to the old days of smoking sections in restaurants. That's just the smell of nostalgia, baby! The first song that came on the radio on the drive in? Pompeii, by Bastille. The lyrics and the familiarity of the song reminded me that, yes, this is an international city. Smog, shmog. I better fight this jet lag and be a damned optimist about this.
On Monday, we were taken to a hospital for foreigner check-ins, where doctors poked and prodded at us to make sure that we were healthy enough by Chinese standards. They measured our height, weight, eyes, and blood pressure, gave us X-rays, an EKG, an abdominal ultrasound and took some of our blood (fingers crossed!). All seven of us were were in-and-out in less than an hour and a half, along with about 15 other foreigners who happened to be there at the same time. Now that's efficiency. We were also taken to our local police station to register our address, standard procedure for any citizen of Shanghai.
Today I had my first day of teaching, but I think I will wait until I have a better grasp of that before I write about it. I am teaching fifteen different sections in Grade 1, 3, 4 and 5 and two “hobby” sections of 2-5 at two schools in the Changning district. I'll dig that sandbox.
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