We made it!

Well guys, we made it to Shanghai last week! The time difference is weird. We left San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon at 1:20 pm pacific time, flew for about 11 hours and 45 minutes and arrived in Shanghai at 5:25 pm on Wednesday. We are exactly 12 hours ahead of everyone on the east coast. I just got to Jingdezhen on Monday morning at 4:30 am. We took a sleeper train from Shanghai which left around 12:30 in the afternoon. It was great! Except for the fact that I slept from about 2:30 to maybe 11:30 on the train and was up the rest of the night and didn't get to bed until 9:30 last night. Then I got up again at 4:30 and went to an antique market with my roommate, teacher, our visiting guest artist and our awesome studio manager/guide.

A view from the old business district in Shanghai.

I feel like I have so much to tell you all, but we don't have a good internet connection yet. We should tomorrow though so I'll try to upload pictures and videos and tell stories then!

I miss home. It's not a terrible homesickness but it is a little nagging feeling all the same. I love our studio (it even has a western toilet! We were pretty happy about that.). My roommate is awesome. Everyone here on the trip is so nice and our teachers and the rest of the people here in Jingdezhen have been incredible too. But it's true...there's no place like home. And in 12 weeks (starting tomorrow...yes I am counting down...ha ha) I will be so glad to see you all again and be back home.

But I think I will certainly enjoy my time here. Right now I'm very jet-lagged and feel like I am experiencing information overload. It's not that hot here but it's extremely humid. It seems like almost as soon as I go out of our room (we have AC here but not in the studio) and walk around campus or go downtown or to the studio I sweat like crazy (sorry...was that too much info?). It's probably good though. I think maybe I'm ridding myself of toxins through all that perspiration! My only problem is trying to stay hydrated since water is not so readily available here.

I should stop here. My battery is really low and I can't charge it here in the dorms. None of my plugs fit the outlets here. Luckily for me though one of the guys has an adapter that fits my stuff so I can keep using them!

Well, my battery is really about to die so I better go. It's almost 8:30 so I can go to bed soon. I'm trying not to go to bed too early because if I do I'll be up way too early. Jet lag is a strange and fascinating thing. I hear it's worse going home.

Anyway, I'll stop here. I miss you all! Love you guys!