Today is a crappy day of work. The main project I traveled here to look after was screwed up and no one is very apologetic. 

Last night I enjoyed a wonderful dinner at a Japanese Hibachi restaurant. I let one of the foreign office managers take the reigns on ordering and it came out very well. As each plate came to us I thought to myself, "I would never order this" and each plate turned out to be delicious. I even tried Sashimi (big chunks of raw fish) for the first time and it was wonderful!

Tonight I think we are going to enjoy the evening as a local would. We'll start with drinks at someone's apartment and go from there.

I'm starting to feel comfortable here. My coworker is now itching to get home, but i feel like I could spend another month here.

Observation of the day: Everyone on the street likes to squat. It apparently helps with circulation and digestion. People are perched on ledges like birds...

Only a couple of photos for this update

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35793320@N07/

Groundhog day

After a full days work we went out to eat and shopping last night. The downtown shopping district is centered around a mall that is anchored by a (cringe) Walmart. We first went to the DVD store where I managed to pick up several new/early releases. I didn't think the quality would be great considering i was paying the equivilant of $2 US combined with the fact that most of them are still in theaters. I was pleasantly surprised that all of those I purchased are perfect quality DVDs. We hit up a few more shops and headed home. The day was pretty uneventful.

I've discovered that I am getting lost in my own imagination while sitting through some of these meetings. Obviously I don't understand anything that is being said in the exchange of conversation around me, so I started making up sitcom scenarios in my head for the people around me. I struggled to keep a straight face the rest of the day. I think I'm going crazy

Day...It doesn't matter

Time is a blur. I've given up trying to figure out how long I've been here and I've also given up on trying to remember what day/ time it is in the states.

Saturday nightwe went to a KTV, which is very difficult to explain if you're never been. Simply put it's a private karaoke party where you sing and play drinking games with random house Chinese girls that don't speak a lick of English. It was interesting, but fun.

I spent yesterday traveling from Putian to Dongguan. Dongguan is a much bigger city, and more advanced.

Today I'll work in the office, and go shopping in the evening.  should be fun.

Some random notes:

Chinese seem to serve hot water with every meal, they don't drink anything else when they eat. Apparently it aids in digestion. They also serve hot water as just a snack.

1 fried egg is served with many meals. All of my meals at restaurants here have been served with one fried egg on the side. I had a room service cheeseburger last night at the new hotel, and of course there's a fried egg on the plate with the fries. Weird.

I haven't taken too many pics lately, but I did update flickr with some new ones. I'll take more when  I go shopping tonight

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35793320@N07/

Day 3...I think

After going to be at 8:00PM for thesecodn consecutive night, I woke up this morning to feel like I've been hit by a train. This is supposed to be my last day of feeling jet lagged, and I'm sure the combination with the cold has not helped. I can barely keep my eyes open right now.

Yesterday we worked in the office and traveled to a couple of nearby factories. I didn't take any photos because I wasn't sure if it was okay, I'll try today. We toured through the first factory yesterday with a feeling of unwelcomeness. The factory supervisor wasn't very friendly and the workers seemed to give us 1 of two extreme vibes; The men looked like they wanted to stab us, and the women fluttered their lashes like they wanted to marry us. 

Our second stop was a factory that produced mostly Puma shoes. After the tour we sat down for tea, which seemed very ceromonial. I can't tell you how much green tea I drank, but I was pretty buzzed and at some point I think the fish in the aqarium were talking to me.

We ended the day with another great dinner with some great fish back at the office.

Today we will visit several factories an hour and a half away. I'm going to try and catch up on some Zs in the car.

Day 2

Yesterday I woke to relentless horn honking and firecracker expolsions. The honks were nothing out of the ordinary for the city. It seems like there are no traffic laws whatsoever and the only way to survive is to lay on the horn. The firecrackers however marked a special occasion. There seemed to be a celebration of prosperity in the new year. No one at the office could explain it to me in English, and I tried to look it up to no avail. Nonetheless it was pretty cool to be a part of. 

I worked in the sample room for most of the day to clear of the problems I'm having with color on my MLB promo shoes. I can't tell you how difficult it is to battle the language barrier, even with those that speak pretty good English. We worked through it though.

The food here has been great so far. While I have not been out to a restaurant yet, the bfreakfast buffet here at the hotel as well as the HUGE meals at the office have been wonderful. Nothing too bizarre or gross...yet

I put my photos on flickr now because it is easier. I'll be updating those photos throughout the day and I'll add the narration  here every morning to explain the pics.

Here's the link, happy flickring

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35793320@N07/

Day one

I guess this is more like the first 24 of the trip rather than day one. I never thought I would travel so many consecutive hours in my life. It doesn't help that I have a head cold as well. 

The flight from Chicago to Shanghai wasn't terrible.  The longest flight I've been on previsou to that one was just the 4 hour trip to L.A. So about 5 hours into the Shanghai flight I started to freak out, then I fell asleep, and then freak out again at about hour 11. When we finally landed in Shanghai, I felt like my leg muscles had atrophied over the 15 hours, but I still had some traveling to do, an hour busride to another Shanghai airport, another 1.5 hour flight to Fuzhou and then the 1.5 hour drive from Fuzhou to Putian.

Not much to mention yet, other than I've learned 2 things about the Chinese.

1. They have much smaller personal space bubbles than Americans. They don't mind standing so close to you they are touching, especially in line. Which brings me to No. 2

2. There seems to be little concept of lines or taking turns here. This pretty much amounts to bottlenecking, and me about to pee myself waiting in line for the restroom, because people have no problem jumping in front of me. 

I'm going to go work on my boxing out skills now.

Some pics.

Shanghai Airport

My bed. I'm pretty sure it has a sleep number of 1000

You can see into the shower and bath from the bed, how.....interesting

Place to drink tea

Nee How

I am making my first trip to China on Monday. I will try to update the blog everyday while I'm there. I'm also considering setting up a flickr account. Stay tuned