First some answers to a few FAQs...
Why are you going to China again?
The first time we went was because Dan was doing intensive language study. When he went for the summer a couple years ago he was doing preliminary research. This time he is doing more intensive research for his dissertation.
What will you be doing?
I thankfully won't be working as much as I was last time (doing some sort of work every day), but I'm crossing my fingers that I won't get too bored. I've been doing accounting/bookkeeping work over the internet for the past 3 1/2 years so I will keep doing that. I'm not allowed to work with the visa I have and Dan has a Fulbright so we don't want to do anything illegal to make the Fulbright people mad at us.
Why did Dan go to China before you?
If any of you were reading my blog the last time we went, you know that I had lots of fun getting four visas and there was lots of stress and frustration that went along with that. We were able to avoid that this time with both of us being able to get temporary residents permits which allow us to stay on one visa the entire time. I had to come in on a "spouse visa" though which involved Dan having to get his temporary resident permit first and then write a letter inviting me to join him. It took awhile (the permit itself took two weeks) because of the various things he had to do before he could apply.
Okay. Now for the actual blog post.
I've never traveled internationally by myself. I've flown from China to the US by myself but I don't think that's the same thing. At least then when you're jet-lagged people are speaking English. So I figured it was going to be an adventure. Or at least not boring. The flight left at 10:30, getting to Shanghai at 2 in the afternoon (1am Chicago time). I then had an 8 hour layover and flew to Jinan at 10:25pm I decided to go to bed pretty late (that ended up being 1am since I couldn't stay awake any longer) so I'd be more tired for the flight and then try not to sleep during the entire layover (since it was 1-9am Chicago time there would be no reason why I would be tired).
The plane wasn't super crowded which was nice. I was in an aisle with no one sitting next to me. I got fed a lot of food and watched all the movies I was supposed to have seen by this point in my life but haven't because I don't see the point in paying money to stare at a giant screen including: Finding Dori, Inside Out, The Shallows, most of The Jungle Book and Crazy Stupid Love (I have seen that one already but I like it). So who knows how much I actually slept.
After getting off the plane I had to go through customs which was super easy and then I somehow ended up in the main part of the airport with all of my luggage and no idea where to go for my next flight. Thankfully it's Shanghai so the people at the airport have good English and I was told I have to go to an entirely different terminal. So I did. It took me awhile to figure out where to get my boarding pass. Then they took my suitcases and didn't give me my boarding pass and told me I had to go into a luggage inspection room. I found out this meant I went in and stood there while someone opened my suitcase and went though everything looking for the stuff that was flagged on the x-ray (yes, even for checked baggage) which ended up being a back up cell phone (maybe cause of all the exploding cell phones?) and a small metal flashlight with a missing battery (I still have no idea why I brought that). Oh well. It was a little embarrassing but I'm sure she's seen worse suitcases.
Also, in Chicago and China I never took off shoes or laptops (or anything) out of bags or anything for security. I also got yelled at when I tried.
My next goal was to find my gate and tell Dan that I was still alive. OH! I forgot to mention that my cell phone wasn't working. It texted me saying welcome to China (I found out I could send text messages but there's no point in doing that since everyone in Chicago was sleeping and Dan had a Chinese number so I didn't want to try to text him) but I couldn't go on the internet or any of my apps. Shanghai airport has free WiFi. The only problem was that there were only two ways to get a username and password. One was to enter your phone number and they would text you a passcode. The other was to find a machine that would print a username and password for you. You were only allowed to enter a Chinese phone number into the browser (which I didn't have) and the only machine I found wasn't working. So those were a bust. There were also computers around where you could get on the internet so I got on one of those so I could send Dan an email. This is also China so Facebook doesn't work unless you have a VPN (which random computers in an airport would not) so I couldn't just get on Facebook and tell him I was fine. Gmail also doesn't work. I decided to try my super old yahoo address. Yahoo got concerned that I was signing into my email from China and decided to send an email to my Gmail account...so that didn't work either...I then decided to try my old AOL work email because no one cares about AOL and that worked! Once I knew Dan was around I told him my idea and entered his phone number into the browser thing so I could get internet. Then I sat around for the rest of the afternoon, bought a crazy expensive coffee and tuna/corn sandwich and tried to stay awake until I got on the plane. It wasn't fun or easy (I can fall asleep while sitting straight up if I'm tired), but I did it.
I've missed China. I like it here a lot. Dan's showed me around the campus and there's a park I'm going to explore today. I think I will like it more this time since I'm not paranoid about randomly being fired from my job. Jinan is different because most people can't speak any English and there aren't many foreigners so you get stared at a lot, mostly by children.
Our apartment situation is better too. We have a three bedroom apartment (for no particular reason). It was hard to find a place that was nice enough and was ok with a short lease. So we took the first one that we could find which happened to be a three bedroom. Everything is functional, which is what we wanted. We're not super picky on how nice things look.
There are still things I need to eat, like fried bread. I forgot that existed. And Jianbing (pictured below) which is delicious and I need to get up early enough to walk outside and get some in the morning. And more bubble tea. You can never have enough bubble tea. And all of the dinner foods. We haven't gone to an actual Chinese restaurant yet (unless you could fried chicken at a Chinese fast food place Chinese food).
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