Tuesday, May 19th. Our First day in Shanghai.

Our flight from Newark to Shanghai took close to 14 hours. Some people were able to sleep for a majority of the flight, while others watched a lot of T.V. shows and movies on the personal screens in front of them.

After the eternal flight, Chinese men came in to take the passengers' temperatures. I guess it was to check for Swine Flu or something, but who really knows. They looked like Stormtroopers from Star Wars.


They used a laser gun to get our temps.




We left the plane and our gate and proceeded to where we were supposed to meet our tour guide. There were hundreds of people holding up signs with names on them, lining our walkway like paparazzi on the red carpet. We saw our "Rollins Tars" sign, which was being held by our tour guide, named Annie.


Annie greeted us and took us to our bus, where we dropped off our luggage. She then surprised us with tickets to ride the Shanghai Maglev Train. The train is the fastest in the world, traveling at an astonishing rate of 285 Miles per hour. (431 Kilometers/hour)

After the 8 minute train ride, we got back on our bus. Our bus driver was on top of it and was able to meet us right outside of the train exit area.

We then rode through the incredible city of Shanghai for an hour, where we eventually found our hotel.

On the ride we saw hundreds of high rises, a vast majority being residential complexes. There are 18 million residents in China, but it seems like there would have the be a lot more than that due to the excessive high rises. Also, most people ride scooters or bikes through Shanghai. There is extremely bad traffic, so this seems to be the intelligent way to escape traffic jams.


When we made it to our hotel, we were pleased to find out it was a 5 star Radisson. Our hotel is much better than any other hotels in the area.

The rooms are very nice, with fairly large bathrooms and really comfortable beds.

Everyone but Biddy showered, and we then departed for dinner at 7:20. We would have left at 7:00, but Jack and Dean were late. There's always someone that is late, or in this case 2 someones.

We ate dinner at an authentic Chinese restaurant, which left a lot to be desired.

The cold appetizers were bland and far from delicious.

I think the general consensus was that there were some good dishes, but most were fairly hard to eat with pleasure. Either way, it was our first experience with real Chinese food. I think most people were slightly disappointed.

After dinner some people elected to see the nightlife, while others decided to catch up on sleep.

To recap, the first day in China went pretty well. We saw a couple of really cool things and experienced authentic Chinese food. The trip seems promising, and I'm sure there will be some really unique and interesting events that will unfold.