Our Adventure Begins: The First Day

It has been a rather eventful day. Our plane took off a little late (about 6:30 AM rather than 6:05) and fog delayed our approach to Atlanta so we disembarked about 9:40 rather than 8:51. The four of us scooted down he hall at terminal A, grabbed the underground and were soon at terminal E. A short walk (with our team "runner" Frank forging ahead) we made it onto our plane to China (scheduled to leave at 10:05 AM it really did not leave until about 10:40). I slept a good deal of both flights! The 777 was almost full with about 260 on board. The seats were comfortable and the food plentiful with 2 hot meals with a sandwich "snack" in between. Not exactly home cookin' but not bad either. Each seat had a TV monitor on the back of the seat in front of it with our choice of "on demand" movies, tv shows, kids shows, documentaries, games etc (all free). Between dozing on and off and eating I managed to watch Enchanted and the Bee Movie as well as play the Trivia Game.

We arrived about 2:15 PM China time (the flight was about 15 hours long) only to find that our luggage had not made it onto the flight! After waiting and filling out the forms we met our host Frank Yih, hopped into his van with fellow Shanghai Rotarian Tom and went from the airport into downtown booming Shanghai. The development here is awesome! We confirmed that China's national bird is "the crane"! Besides sightseeing on the ride we got to know more about each other and discussed some of the objectives of our project.

We arrived at Frank's office building. On the top floor, with great views of the city, he has built an exquisitely furnished penthouse for himself (and wife Nancy) (they have a wonderful scroll painting of an old shoemaker surrounded by the shoes he has repaired/made) and four guest penthouses. they have two sons; both live on the US west coast. One is a computer programmer the other a classical flautist. Our penthouse has four separate roomy bedrooms, each with it's own bath room, surrounding a kitchen and dining room/living room.

Before going out to dinner we relaxed in their penthouse - munchies and more conversation. We learned more about each other, discussed more about our water project, learned about the Shanghai Rotary Club and their many service projects (Frank had just returned from and AIDS "area" in a Chinese province west and south of here) and took photos. We then set up our computers in our penthouse, made some quick "we've arrived" calls home (thanks to Larry's Skype-yea Larry!) showered quickly and were off at about 7 PM.

We had a private dining room in a very nice restaurant. As we walked in four attractive young lades dressed neatly in their brown outfits with matching hats greeted us. We were joined by KFC, a dentist and Shanghai Rotarian. Great food-quite a variety, mostly Shanghai cuisine -with a couple of others too. We had duck, drowned chicken (in wine), spicy chicken, salad, vegetables, two kinds of fish, noodles, steamed dumplings, pork with tofu, tea, rice wine, chicken dumpling soup and more. More conversation and photos. Shanghai Rotary has about 70 members; twelve are female. The are very active in service projects in many areas of China. For example they have, besides the AIDS Project, a Gift of Life Program, a Yunnan water project, a program identifying needy senior citizens in Shanghai and providing them with a medical credit card which covers most of their expenses for the year, as well as participate in the GSE exchanges, sponsor Rotaract, have Ambassadorial Scholars and have sent someone to Rotary's Peace College.

Around 9 PM we walked to a nearby store and then returned to our Shanghai "home".

An eventful first day. We're here. We've begun to reach out to the Rotarians and the needy in China. We've met four wonderful leaders in the New China who really believe in the Rotary motto "Servce Above Self". Each day our "simple" water project takes on new meaning as we broaden our horizons and see other, associated needs and opportunities. Almost more importantly we have alredy reached an understanding that Rotarians in the US and China have the same feelings and goals. If only relations amongst nations could work like this. But we are "doers" and if mountains can be built by combining ant hills I'd like to think that individuals woring together can make changes too. As The Academy for Character Education says we're "changing our nation's character one child at a time" or as Margaret Mead has said "don't ever think that one person can't change the world, for indeed, that's all that ever has" (with apologies because I don't have the exact words).

Breakfast is is their penthouse at 9 AM tomorrow (Tuesday). I think I'll get some sleep now.

Mel