My China Life: Oh Hi!

As of last Sunday, we have officially been in China for one month! Wow! Some days I am surprised at how much we have actually packed into that month and other days I wonder why the calendar still says February...shouldn't it say June by now?

It has been a pretty big transition, for me especially. The kids take it all in stride. Less than three months ago I packed up our entire life into a 10x20 storage unit, said goodbye to our dogs, cows and few remaining chickens. Drove to the coast and spent some time with family and friends and tried to prepare mentally for this trip.

The flight from Vancouver to Shanghai was excruciatingly long. I gave the kids gravol twice but somehow they didn't fall asleep until two hours before we landed. S was so deep asleep that as the plane was unloading I was still trying to shake him awake. I guess the two doses of gravol hit him 10 hours later? I couldn't wait to see my husband K when we arrived and imagine my surprise when he wasn't there to greet us. Here I am with two kids, a chihuahua and nine(yes nine!) suitcases in the Shanghai airport with no husband to retrieve us. Add to that the fact that I didn't have a cell phone to call him! I paid a porter to take our luggage, got the dog sent to quarantine and finally found K who it turned out wasn't allowed into that part of the airport hence the fact that he wasn't there to pick us up. We headed for our flight to Chengdu which ended up being delayed an hour and a half on the runway. I was so agitated and anxious that I thought I would need to get off the plane! We finally arrived in Chengdu and got to our hotel at 2:30am local time! What a day!

Since then we have been doing as much sightseeing as possible. We stayed in the hotel for several nights before moving into our apartment. We slept there for five nights without any heat. When you think of China perhaps you think of warm. Well let me tell you that a cement apartment is not warm in January! After shivering my way through my first night, K surprised me with an electric blanket. It was like heaven crawling into heated sheets!

We are getting very familiar with the Chengdu Metro and we do a lot of walking. People stare at us constantly but I'm learning to ignore it. People are fascinated with the kids and their white skin and are constantly wanting to touch them...which is really gross considering most people here have their fingers constantly up their noses. But we're managing! We've learned to walk really fast! *chuckle*

Here's a few pictures from our first weeks here