Rebecca: First Impressions

Hello patient readers! Sorry for not updating in the first few days; apparently blogspot is blocked by the Great Firewall of China (that's what it's called, really!), so we've been forced to use some sketchy workarounds. Don't ask. That means I could technically access facebook, but I want to use our workaround as little as possible (it's, well, less-than-legal) so I probably won't. I've been writing up about our days, so I'll just start posting those and you can wade through them at your leisure (I'm starting to realize I make these things way too long).

Day 1: First Impressions
We've arrived in China, all safe and with our luggage intact! My first impressions of China - just looking out the window of the plane - were "it's so green" and "there is no sky". We're in Shanghai right now, and for being such an urban sprawl there's a lot of greenery. It's a different kind of green from Canada, though. It's a lush, waxy sort of green, which makes sense, I guess. China is very humid and more tropical-ish than Canada. As for the sky, it's definitely there, it just looks... off, to me. The sun was shining brightly when we landed, but the sky was a sort of grey-white colour. All the smog makes it like that, I guess. It just looked so strange because I'm used to these big, blue prairie skies that stretch on forever. Here, the sky is kind of low and... thick, I guess.

Basically, China is wildly different from anywhere I've ever been, and Shanghai is the sort of city I've only ever seen in movies. There are towering hotels and office buildings next to run-down shacks, villas next to abandoned warehouses, and everything lights up at night. The people are like that too - people in tailored suits next to people literally begging on the streets. It was incredible and terrifying and overwhelming all at once, especially for a small-town girl. 

That's not to say I'm not enjoying it, though. Jen and I had our first adventure already! Our group went out to explore the town, and as it turned out there was some sort of holiday going on today. Which means that a lot of people were in Shanghai with the same idea as us. Let me clarify that: by "a lot of people" I mean "a LOT of people". Like, A LOT. The most people I've ever seen in one place before was at a Chicago White Sox game, and I was pretty impressed by that. This was entirely different. It was like a White Sox game at every intersection. It was less of a "wow, I'm surprised there are this many people in this city" and more of a "wow, I'm surprised there are this many people in the WORLD." There are also apparently no traffic rules. People, cars, bikes and mopeds just go wherever they want, whenever they want, honking and shouting all the way. Sidewalks are irrelevant; walking in the middle of the street is apparently normal. So all of this culminated in both Jen and me being separated from our group in this mass of people - and we didn't even get separated together. Both of us had independent moments of "I do not recognize anyone on this street anymore", and I nearly got run over by a moped. Luckily, we managed to find each other and make our way back to the hostel by ourselves.

(Why do I post these things? My mother is going to flip. I promise I'm fine, Mom! I knew where I was the whole time, I just didn't know where anyone else was.)

Also, I haven't slept in something like 24 hours (planes are not conducive to sleeping), so I'm going to crash now (er, no pun intended? Plane... crash... get it? No? Okay...).

tl;dr: We're alive and in Shanghai!

-Rebecca