Dad does the airplane driver get tired of driving the airplane for 2 days? Quote by Claire after flying for about 10 hours
This is the first entry in a six week journey for our family. Jeff was sent here for work and we are traveling along for the adventure of it. Most of the adventures will be just the kids and I since Jeff will be working all day every day during the week. We do plan to take some weekend trips out of Shanghai together, but all the local traveling will be me and the three kids by ourselves.
Well it all started with a 4:10am shuttle ride to the Seattle airport. Claire asked when we were all the way in Redmond if we were in China yet. I could tell at that point it was going to be a LONG day. We flew to the Vancouver, Canada airport for a two hour lay over. I don’t know if you’ve ever flown into or out of that airport, but as Aiden said “This is the craziest place on earth”. The customs and immigration departments are not laid out with any reasonably thought out manner. I’ve been through customs before in other countries and this is by far the most confusing airport ever. Canadians should not design airports!
Next we spent 12 very long hours flying to Shanghai, China. Quote from Riley here “BORING”. The flight was fine. There was a lot of turbulence the last 2 hours, but other than that a pretty smooth ride. Riley definitely got his fix of TV. Each of us had our own little station with music, TV, movies and I’m sure other things that I didn’t explore.
Arriving in the airport we got our first dose of China. Claire walked through the entire airport with her nose plugged. It was humid, hot and smelly. She finally stopped plugging her nose a half hour or so later. I had to agree with her, but the adult in me had more manners than that.
Next we had a shuttle driver there waiting for us as soon as we got through customs. The Chinese have the customs thing down…not confusing and quick! Our shuttle ride was a heroic experience. Our apartment is about 40km from the airport and it took us nearly an hour to get here. The traffic in Shanghai is somewhat of a bad dance. I haven’t noticed any banged up cars, but I was shocked how many times our driver just moved over into the adjacent lane, even if there was currently a car already there. He wasn’t the only one, everyone was doing it. The hard part for me was we lost Claire’s car seat at the airport, so I kept imagining her being beheaded by the shoulder belt we placed her in. We also noticed along the highway that there are “no honking” zones (which it turns out our apartment isn’t in one of these zones). Even though we were stressed out and nervous about the traffic, no one else appeared angry or aggressive…it’s just the way it is. Not like in the US, when you cut someone off there you risk making someone really angry and being shot.
We arrived at our apartment really tired and a bit disoriented. We’d been awake about 24 hours at that point. In this picture, all three kids were asleep, even Riley until he heard me get the camera out.
This is the first entry in a six week journey for our family. Jeff was sent here for work and we are traveling along for the adventure of it. Most of the adventures will be just the kids and I since Jeff will be working all day every day during the week. We do plan to take some weekend trips out of Shanghai together, but all the local traveling will be me and the three kids by ourselves.
Well it all started with a 4:10am shuttle ride to the Seattle airport. Claire asked when we were all the way in Redmond if we were in China yet. I could tell at that point it was going to be a LONG day. We flew to the Vancouver, Canada airport for a two hour lay over. I don’t know if you’ve ever flown into or out of that airport, but as Aiden said “This is the craziest place on earth”. The customs and immigration departments are not laid out with any reasonably thought out manner. I’ve been through customs before in other countries and this is by far the most confusing airport ever. Canadians should not design airports!
Next we spent 12 very long hours flying to Shanghai, China. Quote from Riley here “BORING”. The flight was fine. There was a lot of turbulence the last 2 hours, but other than that a pretty smooth ride. Riley definitely got his fix of TV. Each of us had our own little station with music, TV, movies and I’m sure other things that I didn’t explore.
Arriving in the airport we got our first dose of China. Claire walked through the entire airport with her nose plugged. It was humid, hot and smelly. She finally stopped plugging her nose a half hour or so later. I had to agree with her, but the adult in me had more manners than that.
Next we had a shuttle driver there waiting for us as soon as we got through customs. The Chinese have the customs thing down…not confusing and quick! Our shuttle ride was a heroic experience. Our apartment is about 40km from the airport and it took us nearly an hour to get here. The traffic in Shanghai is somewhat of a bad dance. I haven’t noticed any banged up cars, but I was shocked how many times our driver just moved over into the adjacent lane, even if there was currently a car already there. He wasn’t the only one, everyone was doing it. The hard part for me was we lost Claire’s car seat at the airport, so I kept imagining her being beheaded by the shoulder belt we placed her in. We also noticed along the highway that there are “no honking” zones (which it turns out our apartment isn’t in one of these zones). Even though we were stressed out and nervous about the traffic, no one else appeared angry or aggressive…it’s just the way it is. Not like in the US, when you cut someone off there you risk making someone really angry and being shot.
We arrived at our apartment really tired and a bit disoriented. We’d been awake about 24 hours at that point. In this picture, all three kids were asleep, even Riley until he heard me get the camera out.
Our apartment is on the 25th floor, probably about 1200 sq feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and very nicely decorated. We have half of the top floor of the building so we can see out nearly any direction. We have a beautiful, amazing view of the city! We have a large park right next door that we can see from one of our balconies. I see the people doing Tai-chi there in the morning.
I don’t think this room gets used much because we had to ask for help several times to get things working. Trying to communicate what the room is lacking or needs fixed has been interesting. Getting the internet working was a challenge. It’s not wireless, which surprises me; I thought Shanghai would be very technically progressive. I did found out very quickly if you push the red button on the wall (they are in every room and not marked in anyway) that a loud alarm goes off and a very militant voice (in Chinese of course) will come over the intercom system (which we didn’t even know we had) and ask you questions that you don’t understand. If you don’t answer him there will be security guards who come to investigate. Apparently, those buttons are SOS buttons. I thought it was a clothes line to be honest. It was right out side the bathroom and there was one directly adjacent to it on the other wall and I thought it was going to push out a tab that I would string to the other one across the room (And I always wondered who Riley gets all the button pushing from…hmmm). That was a bit embarrassing to say the least. We couldn’t turn the air conditioning on because it was all in Chinese and we didn’t know what the buttons were. Plus they were remote controlled and we didn’t know that until we got a helper up here to help us figure it all out. It’s amazing how much you rely on reading to know what in the heck is going on, simple things like the bathroom has 6 switches and they are all labeled in Chinese. It’s not so obvious what each of them does so being able to read traditional Chinese would be helpful here. The only other notable thing about our apartment is each of the bathrooms has vents on the floor that are part of the sewer system. There is an intermittent smell of sewer coming through them. We covered them up with garbage cans and paper and it has helped, but it’s pretty disgusting. Reminds me a bit of our RV when I haven’t put the septic stuff in the holding tanks. Except that’s our poo, and this is everyone in china’s poo. Gross, gross, gross!!! Also, our apartment has the scariest elevator I’ve ever seen. Remember we are on the 25th floor, if it crashes, it’s going down a long ways. One of the elevators is pretty nicely decorated, the other looks like the inside of the kid’s tree house. It has bare lumber that is barely held in place. It makes me think the elevator itself it being pulled up by rope. I just keep thinking about what the standards might be in this country…especially given how much devastation there was a short distance away from that last earthquake. I’ll attach a picture, it’s worth seeing. The picture really doesn't show how scary it is.
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