My days have literally flown by and I have no real concept of time; my body sleeps in small increments, I eat full meals at random times of the day, and I feel like a zombie feeling like I'm pulling "all nighters"each day. I've literally time traveled, so I can take that off my lifetime bucket list.
I was in Seoul, South Korea and we were 13 hours ahead of Atlanta. I went to Guangzhou, China the next morning and they were only 12 hours ahead of Atlanta. So for the next few days I can only recall and describe experiences, more than I can organize them into time periods or days.
Initially, I experiences a large amount of culture shock, as everything was so different. I could not read anything, or talk to anyone and did not even always have access to a place where I could charge my computer or phone. The food was sooooooo very different and so difficult to eat, as this was my first time using chopsticks. My appetite was nonexistent and exhaustion levels and patience levels had a very inverse relationship. China is now very overwhelming; tons of people, no sense of direction, and lots of unfamiliar noises coming from 30+ story buildings.
Dealing with various personalities because difficult when I'm just trying to find some type of normalcy. Some of us want to run and do everything and go everywhere and I just want a decent nights rest and a meal that I recognize. Some of us want to plan every detail of our trips out and know every turn and stop, and others just need a general idea and then figure it out as we go along. Almost like a clash of the Titans at times, but it always works out. It is this very concept that lead to our first big city adventure.
I was very suspicious at how quickly our plans were made and the very short timeline in which we had to complete it all. The problem is, as we had previously found, that many directions and addresses work more like approximations. Some people would know what we were talking about and others didn't and we literally showed the same address; the very address that was provided by the institute. This is what I have come to refer to as "Typical China."
As I was still very jet lagged I couldn't fight it or question anything I just saved my energy for the hour and 15min trip we had ahead of us. We made it close to our stop, or so we believe, but get off the bus a little too early and have to walk a few blocks to the transit station. No big deal.
We do make it to the stop to meet our classmates and hour or so after we had expected, but it was so nice to see some familiar faces that there was no harm, no foul. Looking back on it, our initial meeting was quite the spectacle as we yelled across a courtyard as we existed the metro station, speaking loudly in English. A white male, with an African American female, and Indian female, and a Vietnamese female, who all knew each other and spoke English; we looked like the rainbow coalition for suuurrrreeee!
To be continued...
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