On the way to Nanjing.

I have arrived. Although actually getting here to Nanjing has been somewhat of a roller coaster of an adventure. With only three bags, I was able to keep all my bags under 150 pounds. I (surprisingly) finished all my packing a full 12 hours before the plane was scheduled to take off. So that evening was calm and relaxed. You all will be happy to know my last meal on US ground was Chick-Fil-A breakfast, so I ended my food experience in the US on a very high note. Now off to catch my plane!

When I told people the flight would be in upwards of 15 hours, I had looks of shock. It actually wasn’t too bad considering I was able to be upgraded to business class and enjoyed the full lay down seat. And the fact I only slept about two hours of the flight wasn’t too bad considering I had all the HBO programming I could dream of and a variety of movies all available at my leisure. Even though I only got about 30 pages into my new book, I did catch up on Entourage, watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, enjoyed some old SATC favorites and finally saw The Reader and Vicky Christina Barcelona... So there went about 12 hours of my life dedicated to TV. Now I was in Shanghai... Welcome back.

Being back in Shanghai was somewhat surreal. Mom asked me if I felt back at home, and I actually kind of did. I mean, it’s not my first home, but it was home for more than six months. There was still so much construction going on, probably in lieu of this elusive “expo” going on in 2010. I think people are still a little unsure of what exactly this “expo” is going to be. I was just happy to be somewhere familiar and glad the city hadn’t drastically changed in the two years I was away.

That night, JT’s flight was delayed getting to SH so Mom and I decided to hit up an old favorite of mine for dinner, Simply Thai. You may be asking, you went to China to eat Thai food? Well, I figured I’ll be eating enough Chinese to last a lifetime the next year, and since Mom was footing the bill, I decided we’d go big. After a great meal and only one glass of wine, I was about to fall asleep at the table. My two hours of sleep the last 24+ hours was catching up with me. We got back to the hotel, and at 10 pm I immediately crashed. And little did I know just how big of a day the next day would be!