The Big Move

On August 25th Eastern Mountain Time I got on a plane with an exceptional companion I refer to as Kyle. It was 6:20 am. This plane took me to Chicago. There,

I got on another plane. That plane took me to San Francisco. Now we are talking. From SF I boarded a Boeing 747 and settled in for a long 12 and a half hour flight to Shanghai, China. My drug companion of choice for this flight was cyclobenzaprine, or Flexeril. I am not sure how I would have done without this companion on board. I observed many things on this flight in my foggy state. About half of the crew and passengers were of Asian descent. They would say things over the intercom in English and then repeat them in Chinese. One of my two meals provided was a rice dish. All of this said, do you think I was ready for exiting the plane in Shanghai? OF COURSE you think I was ready because you all know how confident, good with directions, and go-with-the-flow I am back in the US. I hate to tell you this, but you are wrong. As much as I had thought I had prepared myself to make this adventure easy, nothing short of a prior trip to China could have made me prepared for this journey. Kyle and I made our way through the airport to immigration where we got in the line labeled "Foreigners." The funny thing is, we were still surrounded by Asians. They were just Asians from countries other than China. Our trip through customs was a joke. We walked right through. Maybe we were supposed to do something else, but we couldn't read the Chinese signs, so we just walked with the crowd. Our greeter was the lovely Music Teacher at the school we would be teaching at. She brought us to the money exchange counter and hailed a taxi for us. There was only one problem. Her English was minimal. Our Chinese was non-existent. Ah yes, and the taxi driver spoke a dialect of Chinese called "Shanghainese" that no one could understand. We eventually made it to our dorm and brought our suitcases to our rooms. It was now almost 7pm on the 25th. We had been traveling for over 24 hours and just needed to sleep. That is exactly what we did. Crashed. Needless to say the next full week I was waking up bright-eyed and bushy tailed before 5am... but that is because I was going to bed around 8 pm. A 12 hour time difference is hard to adjust to. My fellow day/night rotating RN's can feel my pain here. And for the record, I don't think that my job rotating shifts helped me with this transition at all. I never thought I would enjoy dorm living again, but my co-workers in my dorm are my connection to the Western world.