Nostalgic Nuisance

I'm nostalgic. I also love dates. So putting those two together I can usually remember specifically the date that major events and sometimes not so major events happened. More often than not I find myself picking up my journals and going back a year or two from the current date. I think it's fun to see what was going on. So this week takes me back to an eventful week a few years ago. Okay 7 years to be exact. (Meg can you believe it?!)
(this is not an actual excerpt from my journal. But pretty close, I just reread it. Enjoy!)

Aug 17 2004
"Well I'm sitting in LAX and I just can't believe what I'm about to do. What am I doing? I'm going to CHINA? What am I doing? Here we are a bunch of strangers all sitting silently waiting to get on a 15 hour flight to the other side of the world. I think we're all a little weirded out. No one is talking to anyone...
Well the plane ride was... not awful. But surely not something I'm looking forward to again. They gave us these little travel bags. COOL! We open them up and there is a sleep mask, tiny toothbrush and toothpaste, a small comb, and a sticker that you put on the top left corner of your chair to tell them if you want to be woken for the meal or left sleeping... I should have put the sticker there even though I didn't sleep. Not too sure what we ate. But I'm pretty sure that seafood was one of the sides in a very questionable looking Chinese tv dinner type plate. Also FYI when flying on a Chinese owned airline, don't expect to be watching American movies. Although watching a movie in Chinese makes for interesting entertainment especially when the 'couple' of the movie in the end meet on a beautiful bridge in bright colored robes on stilts and then end up falling off of them into each others arms and falling to the ground. Not sure where that came from. There was no flying, or stilts in any of the other parts of the movie. I wish I had taken an Ambien like Meggie did. She slept the whole way. Except the one time she woke up all confused and laughing. Now that was a good moment!
It was a bit weird getting off the plane in the middle of the night and walking into an airport where everything is Chinese. And what's with the big fat penguins dressed in different clothes. I'll have to figure that out.* It's quite relieving when you see a Chinese man holding a sign that says ILP teachers! Hurray!
Getting to our hotel was an adventure. Their freeways have no room on the sides if there is an accident, but they do have people cleaning the freeways with no space between them and the cars going like 80 miles an hour. Okay so I couldn't tell how fast the driver was going because it was in kilometers per hour.
Shanghai is huge and colorful! It's crazy seeing Chinese everywhere. There are a few signs in English but mostly just Chinese. The high light of the bus ride was when our driver when down a one way street in down town Shanghai. Yup.. that caused a back up. Especially because it's a two lane, one way road, that is very narrow. He had to do like a 6 point turn to get around. People were honking up a storm. They honk a lot here. I don't like it.
Finally we got to the hotel. The lobby is gorgeous we're thinking 'oh yes! A nice bed!' Seeing as I didn't sleep on the plane and we're now 14 hours ahead of what we're used to... I have no idea how little sleep I'm on. Well the lobby may have been nice but the rooms, not so much. But I didn't care I just wanted to lay down. I walk over to the bed put my bag down on the floor and jump on the bed ready to finally feel relaxed. Note to self and others. NEVER jump on a bed in China. They are wood blocks covered with a thin layer of padding. So the image my friend witnessed was a exhausted Cami so happy to see a bed then jumping full force only to land hard on her side and then writhe in pain. Followed by large outbursts of laughter.
It's gonna be a long 4 months if this is how my bed at school will be.^"

* The penguins to this day I don't know what they are. I saw them everywhere. I developed a fetish for them just because they were a mystery to me. I have two DVD cases with them on it, and a stuffed animal of one. So weird.
^ My bed I slept in at the school had been broken by whomever used it before so there was a give in it. But I still had to train myself to sleep on broken wood for 4 months. Upon coming home and sitting on my bed I was in awe of how comfortable a matress could be.