Arriving in Shanghai

We made it to Shanghai! In fact, the adventure started this morning at 9am, Friday – but it wasn’t until 9pm, Saturday, that we arrived here. The “excitement” really started at 12, about the time we were supposed to depart. One of the engines was out and they tried to fix it – no luck. We’re just happy they found it at SFO! We finally departed at 3:30pm...by then our bottom’s already hurt from sitting so long! We were about 8 hours into the 13 hour flight when Karl turned to me and said, “If we were going to Siberia, we'd be there by now.” The great thing was the airport was new, extremely efficient (as measured by “time to get baggage”) and foreigner-friendly (even the immigration lady smiled when she talked to us!). The Renaissance Yangtze (as in river) has well appointed, tho very small rooms. This is where my group typically stays and it’s near the sales and marketing office. We’ll likely change hotels once I finish my 3 work days. Despite an Economy Plus window and middle seat, it took us time to de-pretzel ourselves upon arrival. So we decided to wander after unpacking. Unfortunately there isn’t much around here since it’s a business area. However, we still manage to find “Hello, Hello DVDs” and “cheaper, cheaper Rolex” being sold out of wagons on the side of the road. We even found a Hooters that serves Thanksgiving dinner if we can’t find a better option?! Tom (my new boss) is lending his driver to us tomorrow to tour the city. We’ll be having dinner with Michael (I’m inheriting his engineering team) and his wife. They are originally from Shanghai but lived in Oregon for a long time. More after we venture out tomorrow.