Day 1 in Shanghai - Study China Programme

Day 1 in China and oh my goodness was I glad to get here. 7 hours on the first flight to Abu Dhabi, and 9 on the second (as it was delayed for an hour) with a 4 hour wait in between - and I hadn't slept a wink! As soon as I stepped off the plane the heat hit me like a smack in the face. It didn't help that I was wearing 3 pairs of tights, 2 layers and a hoody! On top of that carrying my 30kg bags along with me wasn't helping much. As soon as I got to the baggage collection I saw some people who obviously weren't Chinese and my first thought was to ask them were they on Study China. Thankfully they were, and they were really friendly too so I immediately felt more at ease. Our Chinese volunteers met us at the airport and were so friendly and smiley that I managed a smile, even though I was utterly exhausted. However, as soon as we walked towards them, they had a camcorder out and were taking a lot of pictures - much to my dismay!! We once again went outside to get the bus and I was immediately uncomfortably warm. Luckily the bus had a lot of air conditioning! As soon as we arrived at the University we received a warm welcome and a t-shirt of the University. We were told to go to our rooms and leave off our luggage and meet again in the lobby for an orientation. A lot of people were quite confused by this as it stated that we were able to have the rest of the day free for ourselves - and I was really looking forward to some sleep! Anyway, we had a quick tour of the University and I have to say, it really was so beautiful. There was a river running through the campus filled with fish and lily pads, green trees and bushes all around and on top of that they had a lot of free space with basketball courts etc. that were filled with students. After the tour I headed back to my room for a quick change before I went to dinner with the others. At dinner I was quite surprised to see that none of the waiters or restaurant staff spoke any English, and that we had to point to pictures on the menu to order. Altogether there were 14 of us who went to dinner and so we just got food for the entire table. We had a lot of craic and banter at dinner and everyone got along really well! As I had had no sleep it felt like I had been there for days and that we had all been friends for a while! That evening, we took a walk around the streets and I was surprised to see real signs of poverty in the streets. There were open bags of rubbish where the meat had been picked clean from skewers etc. I had automatically assumed that this had been some kind of animal (as the bags looked like they had been torn open) however later on that night I saw a few people rummaging through the bags and picking the meat from the skewers, and putting them into their dishes. This had been a real shock for me as I had never seen anything like this before! This made me realise how lucky and privileged I am in life. We were all quite tired and so we didn't stay out for too long. When I returned to my room I attempted to tell everyone about my day via Facebook but when I tried to log on the website the internet connection failed every time. I couldn't understand why, but when I mentioned this to my roommate she informed me that Facebook and social networking was banned in China! I couldn't believe it. Sometimes I forget that I am in a communist country. I think the next 20 days are going to be very interesting for me......