Date and Time
3:30 pm Wednesday April 29th in Shanghai (2:30 AM Central Time)
Wow, what a day.
Last Night (Monday night) Shawn and I stayed with my Aunt in Cedar Rapids. We decided to stay awake all night with the goal of sleeping as much as possible on the airplane. We played Wii for 8 hours, and finally, at 3 am, we fell asleep for an hour. We met the rest of the group at the Eastern Iowa Airport at 5am on Tuesday morning to depart for our 630 flight. Everything went smoothly out of Cedar Rapids and we were in Chicago 45 minutes later. O’Hare is always an adventure, and with over two hours to kill, we had plenty of time do explore.
At our gate, we ran into a very friendly man from Los Angeles California named Harry Reninger who works for a company called EFX Performance. He demonstrated his product that increases Balance Strength and Flexibility. He was heading to Shanghai fo the Asian X-Games to promote the brand and try to get some professional athletes to endorse their product.
At around 10 AM Central Time, we boarded the plane bound for Shanghai. Despite my best effort, and with the aid of a double dose of Tylenol PM, I could not fall asleep. I slept for a total of 45 minutes on the whole flight. Jarrett, on the other hand, slept for almost 9 hours of our 13.5 hour flight. The list of movies that were available was pretty impressive, and helped pass the time. I watched Pual Blart Mall Cop, He’s Just not That Into You, Bolt, The episode of the Office when Michael, Jim, and Karen interview for Jan’s job, and the episode where they record a commercial for Dunder Mifflin (twice each), and an episode of the Big Bang Theory. Our plane was a Boeing 777 and was relatively full, in Chicago, the American Airlines supervisor said there would be 42 open seats in coach, but the back section, where we sat, was full.
The last two hours were especially tough because all of the movies had been watched, and you can only sit on a plane for so long. We arrived in Shanghai at around 1:45. Overall, we had a very smooth day of travel. We were met at the Airport by Anthony (our guide) and ShingShing, who came to China early to visit family. Currently we are all on the bus to Hangzhou, approximately 3 hours from Shanghai. I think I am the only one other than Prof. Ewest and Anthony awake. The weather here was beautiful when we landed 72, sunny, and not humid. As we left the airport I am very much reminded of Miami. Leaving the airport there is a lot of water from the ocean and mall streams that flow to the river, there are treees on the side of the road that remind me of mMiami also. Tonight we are going to eat supper and then get a tour of the campus. I am very anxious to get to the hotel. It has been a long day and I am in dire need of a shower.
Erik
