I would write a longer post, but, you know, I’m lazy.
The trip was rather uneventful. The security was a bit ludicrous in San Francisco, but I’ll give the TSA a lot of slack because they do a pretty hard job with a whole lot of pressure and, for the most part, they do it pretty well. On both flights Greg and I were the only people in a three seat row, so we had plenty of room to spread out. That was nice, because the flight from SFO to Shanghai/Pudong is just as long as I remember it being.
We arrived in Hangzhou, at ZUCC, around 9:30PM Wednesday night. My rather poor Chinese was good enough to get me some toilet paper and a few boxes of that wonderful iced tea I drank so much of in Shanghai. Today has, thus far, been spent getting our campus IDs (which are SmartCards, amazingly), registering our residency with the PSB and figuring out how to connect to the internet, which was a chore in itself.
There are a ton of posts and quite a few photographs that could, and hopefully will, come from the events of the last 48 hours, but they’ll have to wait because it’s noon and I’m hungry.
Glad to hear you guys made it OK. I’ll be back soon enough, but if you have any urgent questions, you can write me. I check my e-mail almost once a day here.
Left by Foreign Teacher Liaison on August 28th, 2003
Bing hong cha?! You bastard, I miss that stuff…
Glad you made it safe, your mom was worried you hadn’t emailed, she even called me last night to see if I knew any way to get a hold of anyone. Glad John posted his url, I had forgotten it, I can at least give her that next time.
BTW, I guess it’s about time for me to set up that thing with the server with the authentication for the problem with flow of information. If you know what I mean…
Left by Jordan on August 28th, 2003
John, cool. I think Greg and I are managing pretty well. We should get our passports back from Ms. Zhou tommorow and then we’ll be able to exchange money and really get started on moving in. As it is, we have managed to get our ID cards and then Greg and I got the information we needed to connect to the network from my room (that was fun).
Jordan, yeah, that damn tea is great, though today all I’ve drank is water… must … replace … fluids. I should have never told my mom that I woud e-mail or call her the night we arrived. I just didn’t have the stuff set up then, and I was too tired to do anything about it (and the offices I would need to visit were closed). I e-mailed her as soon as I could, just before midnight Eastern on Wednesday.
The thing with the server would be good, though amazingly enough I can access CNN and the NY Times, though the BBC is still no good. But hey, CNN?! I’m not complaining.
Left by John on August 28th, 2003
My little filter script thing should still be up. It’s not great, but you can use it for now. http://www.d0pe.com/~anselor/filter/.
Left by Eric on August 28th, 2003
Should we all pitch in our own web apps that may get John thrown into a Chinese prison?
Left by Scott on August 29th, 2003