The Arrival

Well Friends, I made it. After talking about "moving to China" since senior year of college I finally did it. Not without first making sure my hair was its blondest possible and securing the correct formula (Thank you Mia at Mercer Street) to keep it up after I find a trusted hair colorist here.

It was a nice 13 hour flight and I arrived at 5:45 Thursday evening. I was greeted at the airport by my program coordinator Ouxin (O-Sheen) and his girlfriend and whisked away immediately to my LUXURY apartment. I held my breath as Ouxin opened the door- behind it would be where I would spend every day of the next 6 months- and...it was normal. Not over the top luxury (which i was secretly really hoping for but knew it was a longshot) but also not scary by any means. Everything is brand new and clean which is my main necessity. But let's take a moment to really evaluate what is Luxury in China, shall we? The first thing I noticed was not the nice white couch but the shiny plastic wrapped all around it. No, its not brand new and needs to be un-wrapped. It really is a couch covered in plastic. On to the kitchen: all new appliances and by all appliances I mean 2 burners and a fridge. No oven for baking cookies or stratas and no microwave for heating lean cuisines or canned soup. Boy is my diet going to change. Speaking of diet (on a side note) I already made it clear to Ouxin that I am a vegetarian but I think I may have confused him b/c just minutes before he asked what my favorite Chinese dish was and I said hot pot which consists of cooking meat in spicy boiling broth. I tried to qualify my vegetariansim with "Oh but sometimes I see meat that I just can't resist". Let's just chalk that one up to lost in translation. Oopsie.

So back to the apartment. It's sparse and not by any means luxurious but there are a lot of people in worse conditions so I can't complain. One problem though...there was no toilet paper when I arrived!!!!! I mentioned this minor oversight to Ouxin and he pointed to tissue. Ummm. OK. He then said there is a Wal-Mart around the corner we can go get things. So off to Wal-Mart we went in spite of all the Anti-Wal-mart sentiment I had built up while living in California. Oh Wal-mart. I won't say much except that it was Wal-mart in China. You draw your own conclusions. Although I must mention the food area is quite a spectacle and not for the weak stomach. After about 45 minutes and $35 I was done with my first Wal-Mart trip in maybe 5 years.

And that was all for my first night in Shanghai!