International Travel and Arrival

Hi everyone,

As I'm sure you've assumed, I've arrived safely in China and today will be my second full day in Jinan, which is the capital city of 

Shandong province.  Jinan is famous for

 the ma

ny natural artesian springs that are found within the city limits.  I'll be visiting a few o

f the springs as well as other sites in the next few days, but for now I'd like to share a bit about my flight  and my first day in Jinan.

My flight from Milwaukee>Chicago>Beijing>Jinan was extremely tiring, but overall u

neventful.  I tried my best to sleep on the plane and was able to do so intermittently without any help from sleeping pills.  On the plane, I ended up switching seats twice with people

 who 

wanted to sit together with friends or family and ended up with an isle seat in the middle of the plane.  Actually, karma must have been on my side for switching seat

s, because I ended up right next to three different groups of interesting people who I w

as able to talk to.  The first group was a guy from Chicago and his two kids who were actually coming back to Jinan to see relatives (small world!).  There were also an older couple and a single older lady on my other side.  It was a lot of fun to talk to the older folks and I could really tell by their accents that they were from Beijing.  The single old lady was a real character and she talked for about 70% of the 13.5 hour flight!!!  Before we landed in Beijing, the plane had to make a series of wide, arcing manuevers in order to avoid several thunder storms in the 

area.   By the time I arrived at 北京首都国际机场 (Beijing's Airport) I was so exhausted that I actually went and laid down and drifted in and out of sleep while I waited for my connection to Jinan. I had the eyelids getting heavy/snapback awake thing going on for like 3-4 hours!

I slept for the entire flight from Beiing

>Jinan, only waking up to eat the on flight snack, which was a delicious ham on an english muffin type thing.

Once I finally arrived in Jinan, the younger sister of my friend and colleague from UWM (Wu Ying) and her classmate (Chen 

Fanli) picked me up from the airport.  They have been just wonderful and I'm not sure what I would have done if they hadn't been around to help me get into the city and settled.  They had eve

n helped me to reserve a nice, but affordable hotel room located very close to a lot of the best sites in Jinan.  After checkin

g into the hotel it was off for a quick bite to eat.   One of the things that really 

surprised me about Jinan is just how hot it is here.  Jinan has definitely lived up to its reputation as one of the "Four Furnace Cities of China" (Ji

nan, Chongqing, Nanjing and 

Wuhan for you Chinese language students).  After that it was off to bed to try and sleep it off and get ready for my first day in China.

When I woke up yesterday, the first order of business was breakfast, 

which is provided by the hotel each morning from 6-8 am.  The breakfast was buffet style and definitely Chinese style with rice porridge, all kinds of steamed buns (which is the main staple here, not rice), lots of meat and vegetable dishes to eat alongside.  Everything was so d

elicious that I am going to make a point of being on time for breakfast every day despite the early cutoff time (jetlag helps with this, I woke up at 4:45 this morning feeling great).

Yesterday, I spent most of the day on my own waiting for Wu Juan (Wu laoshi, my colleague) to arrive from Zaozhuang in the south of Shandong province to arrive by train.  I took a couple of long walks around the area near the hotel and ended up going through the student dormitory area of Shandong university which was very pretty. 

I also wasted a lot of time, messing with Skype because I haven't been able to make calls to actual phone numbers, just Skype to Skype, so if you've received any crypitc, dead-air messages, its probably just me.  I'm embarrassed to say, but I slept from about 3:30pm-8:00pm (2:30am-7:00am US Central).  Fortunately, I woke up about 30 minutes before Wu Juan and Wu Ying arrived to pick me up for dinner.  Last night, dinner was delicious, if not a bit shocking by American standards.  We had 鸭血粉丝汤 (yāxuě fěnsī tāng) or "duck blood sweet potato noodle soup."  The duck blood factors in as a congealed cake that has the texture and consistancy of tofu, but alot darker in color.  With the meal, I also had a duck head.  Unfortunately, the pictures of me eating the duck head are all on Juan's camera, so I'll have to post them later.  We also took a quick tour of a very crowded grocery store, where I could have spent hours looking for old favorites (maybe later).  After returning to the hotel, I had planed to catch some Chinese  television, but to my surprise, I was out like a light!  After catching up on so much sleep, I actually feel really great today, so hopefully it will be a very eventful day.  Time for breakfast!  Catch everyone later!

Andy