a very good place to start

So let's start at the very beginning…

Megan and I left beloved KC and the very comfortable comforts of home on August 26, flew to O'Hare and got on our Asiana Airlines flight to Shanghai, via Seoul. Tylenol PM did its job and we both got a solid night's sleep on our way to the Far East.

The Seoul-Incheon airport is cool. Very sleek and schmancy with all the amenities you could ever want: beds, showers, massages. There's even a Caribou Coffee. In Korea!? Yay globalization?

After a short flight to Shanghai and an hour through customs (which now includes health questionnaires and some high tech temperature checks), we were met by Mr. Zheng, our school coordinator. When I saw the paper with our names on it that he was holding up, I gulped a big gulp and thought, yiiiiikes……We're really doing this! I am in CHINA.

Awkward-introductions made, Chinese cash obtained, we jammed our bags into the small Asian-person-sized car and attempted to stay awake as we drove north to the Jiangsu Province. The Shanghai traffic was(/I'm sure is always) nutso and the sky was(/I'm sure is always) a heavy polluted gray. After an eternity our driver Starskyed up against a curb and we were told we were stopping for lunch.

"Where are we?"

"[some town I don't remember the name of]"

"Oh."

"Just outside Shanghai."

(Our four-hour drive eventually turned into seven.)

I don't know what guide books I didn't read, but when Zheng passed over the picture menus and asked what we liked, I picked out a harmless looking dish and said, "I'll have that" – not realizing that all meals in China are served family style and that I was not ordering my own dish. He politely overlooked my ignorance. He couldn't, however, so easily overlook our ignorance when we said we'd just like water to drink. He made some noise of discomfort and finally said, "ehhhh…. Do you like beer?" (A lot of the tap water comes straight from the rivers, and most of what does is not treated. Blech.)

The driver was a kid probably younger than Megan, who kept stepping out for a smoke. He leaned over to Zheng at one point and rattled off something and Zheng said, "He say this is the first meal he have with foreigners… And he feels…very…excited!" The Chinese we've met who speak English do so with much caution in order to choose the right words and the faltering cadence is fun to imitate around the apartment.

We demonstrated our chopstick prowess, used our first real Chinese bathroom and squashed back into the hot car laden with warm Cokes from the restaurant. Six hours, scenes of marshy farmland and demos of Chinese highway driving later, we rolled into neon-lighted Huai'an at the perfect time for…showers? Bedtime? No, no – more food!

Bedraggled, stinky and in stale clothes, we were informed the Vice-President of the college was meeting us for dinner. Fantastic. We entered a large hotel and went up to the restaurant on the second floor where we were led to a private dining room. (I'm seeing that more, that the large restaurants have open seating on one floor or in one section, and little rooms on the second or in another section.)

Pre-VP-ness this lady was an English teacher but she was rather stingy on the English language convo. Her son, who's 18 and quite a fan of the USA, was with her and did a lot of the talking. His command of the language is achieved through Hollywood movie watching (illegally online of course).

We zombied our way through dinner and the short ride over to our new home, which is a subject for another time. But after six weeks, it is feeling like our home.