The Daily Journal

We finally arrived here in China at 2 p.m. China time (which is 2:00 a.m. U.S. time). We got here, so I guess that is a good start to the trip. I personally didn't think the flight was too bad but that's probably because I slept most of the way. Ask anyone else and they'll tell you the food was nasty and the flight was way too long and boring. But Mino was entertained when he colored with the 4-year old chick sitting next to him. I think we all were expecting a lot of pollution but still were shocked by the amount we saw when we arrived. The fact that most people ride their bicycles on the same freeway as the cars was startling. We were lucky to all get rooms on the same floor and we decided that Professor Yang's room was the party room for the night (but he doesn't know that yet). It was kind of funny when Loredana went to jump on the bed without realizing that the mattress was as hard as the floor was. We are all still trying to get adjusted to this new time difference but still can't get over that we are half way across the world and it's now 12 hours behind at home. But don't worry, we'll be careful to make sure we don't wake anyone up when we call. Our first dinner experience was a good one. We tried all sorts of food ranging from ten-thousand year old eggs, sweet and sour pork, really SPICY chicken, fried rice, fish, and finished up with a dessert that had a taste somewhere between a bread and cake. We're all pretty tired from our long day of travel so we're going to call it a night a little bit early tonight but stay tuned for our e-mail tomorrow.