China's Lessons Learned

First Impressions:
-The people are not as different as I had expected. They are people like you and me! (surprise)
-There are many unfamiliar smells. Even the cigarette smoke smells...different.
-The highways may look like ones in a big city in the US, but don’t be fooled. Driving here is different. Either our cab driver ran a million red lights, or I just don’t understand the light system!
-Breakfast=dinner
-I am freaked out about the water. Taking a shower was difficult as I tried to keep all water out of my mouth, brushing my teeth was almost unbearable, and I sanitize my hands after I wash them. I’m probably being crazy, but my germ-phobia kicks in when I think about my toddler and the baby growing in me. How do I wash dishes here???

Things to remember:
-Hand sanitizer. Use it.
-I was dreading the plane ride, but it really wasn’t too bad. It was long, but the plane was so big that I didn’t feel like I was keeping everyone up when Miss A would cry a little. She was a champ!
-Take every chance you get to walk around while on the plane. Potato chips + holding a baby for 13 hours= no good (and swollen ankles for me!)
-Ask for water every time drinks are brought by. Just thinking about H2O is making me thirsty!
-Don’t put toilet paper in the toilet. Just don’t do it. With Mister trying to get some sleep and our baby wide awake because of the time change, I worked helplessly to fix a toilet that just kept flowing and flowing and flowing.
-No matter how impossible it may seem, you CAN use a squatter toilet. Just don’t forget your own toilet paper.


The story:
There are many good, kind people here and God watches over us. We left for our trip at 7am Thursday and our plane arrived in Shanghai at about 6pm Friday. From there we went through customs, got all of our luggage, and crammed into a taxi. The taxi driver told us there was a train station with a fast train still available (we had planned on going to a different station and take the slower train). A 1 1/2 hour trip to Nanjing sounded great to us! We went there instead only to find out that there were no trains to Nanjing until 9am the next morning. Mister had orientation starting at 8:30am. Our other option was to take a 1 hour subway ride to another train station and then take the 4 hour train to Nanjing. That would get us to Nanjing around 5am. We tried to figure out what we should do as we stood with our 7 huge pieces of luggage and our tired baby. Only minutes later, a young man came up to us and started talking to Jaren. There was a bus (like a greyhound) full of people headed to Nanjing and they had room for us! This meant not hauling our bags everywhere and a much quicker ride to Nanjing! It was a little more expensive to take this route, but oh so worth it. What a blessing that out of the hundred of people in the train station, this young man talked to us and that there was room for us and our things. We made it to the hotel before 2am and two kind men helped with our bags.

Hallelujah! We are here! Mister is at orientation and I am sitting in our hotel room because it is raining and Miss A is asleep. (These are not excuses for not being out in the city exploring already, right?) I am surrounded by kind people who I do not understand and very thirsty for some water--but so happy and excited to find a home and be here with my wonderful husband and sweet baby!

I promise to post more pictures, but for now these will have to do.

Miss A's makeshift bed. She finally slept through the night because of this baby!