Arrival in China

I arrived at the Shanghai airport on February 6th around 2:30 by surviving a rather grueling 15 hour flight from Chicago.  I was not on the flight with the other 10 people from my ILP group due to the fact I left out of Dulles.  I was told earlier in the week that I was to hang out, outside of customs until about 6:30pm when the rest of the group would be arriving.  I waited and waited and at about 7:30pm, I was worried that something had not gone according to plan.  I was fortunately able to find an info desk that allowed me to make international calls as well as use the internet.  With help from my dad and Alex, they were able to contact the directors of the program and figure out what had happened.  Apparently, a few weeks ago, when the city I was suppose to teach in got switched, they didn't make the switch on my head teacher's list so I wasn't on her list at all.  To make matters worse, the group arrived in a different terminal than the one I was waiting in.  The group had already left the airport on a bus and were on their way to the city of Hefei (a 7 hour drive).  After 9 painful hours at the airport, I luckily was set up to stay at an amazing Ramada hotel close to the airport by ILP and was relieved that I would not have to sleep at the airport with all of my luggage.  I slept rather well that night in my deluxe suite and around noon the next day, my head teacher and a very nice man that works at the Hefei school, came and met me at the hotel.  We then took a train from Shanghai to Hefei and I arrived safely at the school that evening.  Let the adventures begin!

The room at the Ramada hotel in Shanghai