We finally arrived at our new home!
We left the university in Shanghai Saturday morning at 8:30 not knowing it would be a marathon of a day and one that we wouldn't soon forget. There were 10 of us who were riding the train together (along with all our luggage, guitar cases, computers, and various other gear). You can imagine what it looked like seeing all those foreigners trekking along together. Needless to say we received many stares. :-)
When we arrived at the train station one of the young ladies from England had lost her ticket so we waited out in the hot sun while they went to buy her another one. In a bit it was time to go through the check point and lug all our stuff upstairs. Once through the station it was time to lug the stuff downstairs again and go out to the dock. The train had pulled in and we had to nearly run almost a quarter mile, the length of the train (our seats were in car number 2). We hurried - as much as possible - to get all the luggage on board and stored in the overhead racks (The 70 and 80 lb. bags were horrendous!) We did manage to get everyone on and seated before the train left. Surprisingly, it was a very smooth ride. (They even had a lady going up and down the isle selling goodies kind of like on an airplane).
We rode the train for about 2 hours (the third stop) to Changzhou and when it pulled out we were standing on an empty dock and the town was on the other side of all the tracks. We began walking and found a gentleman. One of the girls knew some Chinese and he told her we needed to go downstairs and up again on the other side. We went around the corner and saw a long flight of stairs (oh no! drag the luggage down again!) A young man appeared out of nowhere and began helping me with my luggage and continued to help the other ladies. When we crossed under to the other side, there was another set of long stairs back up. By this time we were so exhausted we could hardly move and the heat and humidity was taking a whopping toll. As we started trying to go up, people began helping to push the luggage up on the marble slants that were in the middle of the steps. Jackie from the school had come while we were in the tunnel and he also helped with all the luggage. I'm sure they were probably overwhelmed at all the luggage. We left three of the group at the station since they were going to another university across the city. The other seven of us began our trek to the mini vans. I thanked the young man who had been so much help and asked his name. He said he didn't have an English name yet so we nicknamed him "Strong Man". We have found so many friendly, helpful people just like him wherever we've gone.
After having lunch at the school and taking a look at Jackie's office they delivered us to our living quarters. The four girls are at a complex of apartments where they share a living space with from one to two other people (two of the girls in one apartment, and two in another across the block, in the same compound). Next we were brought to our home. We are in an apartment on the 8th floor. We have a large living/dining area with sliding glass windows/doors on the living room side which opens out to a laundry patio for drying our clothes. The patio is enclosed with windows which remain open most of the time unless it is raining. We have 3 BRs and 2 Baths, a small kitchen with a 2-burner stove, microwave, fridge/freezer!, sink, and washing machine.
We had no bottled water in the dispenser until Monday afternoon so we had to find a market (more about that later). It was so-o-o good to get home and crash!
Sorry about the long post. I'll tell more about our experiences as time goes along.
