That day has finally come, packed my bags till 6 o’clock in the morning and I was ready to go. Had my last goodbye dinner with my sister, brother and everyone in Kimono. I cannot cry I thought by myself, and luckily I didn’t. It was fun with everyone telling stories and jokes instead of being sad. They gave me a big card with messages and a little poem, which took them 3 hours to rhyme as best as possible. With everyone leaving at 2 o’clock, I had to bring Dana home in Lelystad and pay my last visit to my sister-in-law and brother. Arrived at home again I had to finish packing and arrange some stuff for Kimono.

Saying goodbye
While just having slept for 3 hours I had to head towards my parents…And that’s where the tears began to show. Trying to be strong, I still couldn’t manage to hold my tears inside. With me starting to cry, I saw tears in the eyes of my mom. Her telling me to take good care of myself and be brave got me crying even more...Just like I shed tears now writing this blog. Love you mom and dad!

Schiphol airport 11:30
I just couldn’t stop crying untill I arrived at Schiphol and had to say goodbye to my sister. She told me not to stress and just have fun. ‘Don’t cry, there is nothing to be afraid off’ she said. So with that said, I went inside with Ineke and got my luggage checked in. My suitcase was like 27kg o.0 and my hand luggage was about 7 kg? I need to rearrange my stuff, cause I can only take 20kg to Japan. So I think I will be eating and drinking all the food I took with me instead of taking it to Japan? XD Having checked in the next thing I had to do was getting 3 injections for South Korea. Last time I visited Seoul, my stomach hurt for over a week and I lost 3kg in just 2 days. So I knew I didn’t wanted that to happen again. Right now my arms feel like someone had punched me really hard, or a tough warming up at Jakes.

With my beebies arrived (Xiuf, Yiting, Irene, Sue, Sandra, Belvia, Charmaine and Ineke) it soon was time to say goodbye. Just only focusing on happy thoughts to keep me from crying, but when my mom called me a couple of times, it instantly got me crying again. Those people sitting next to me in the plane must have thought I was dumped or something hahaha!

On board 14:20
Oh and everyone, thanks for sms’ing me! I just scanned the messages really quickly cause I got sad while reading it. So there I was, on board in Lufthansa at Schiphol ready to leave to Frankfurt.. With my eyes swollen and a headache, it luckily was a short flight, I arrived at Frankfurt within just one hour. I had to walk a whole marathon to get at the gate for the transferring flight to ShangHai. Well, I thought by myself, I don’t have to wait that long to board then. And I was wrong..While the gate was supposed to open at 17:00, I had to wait till 17:45. As you all can guess, my flight had a delay of one hour. While sitting in the waiting room (if you call it that?) I felt like I was already in China. All those Chinese people sitting there doing their thing, REAL Chinese people if you know what I mean.
Luckily there was a nice Chinese lady sitting next to me in the plane and this cute little German boy. We were seated like this: window-littleboy-chineselady-me-aisle. That cute little boy was only 6 years old and he was traveling alone to Shang Hai where his mother would pick him up, talking about being brave o.0 It was funny, the Chinese lady and this Chinese flight attendance were struggling to communicate with him. The stewardess asked him if he could speak German, which he replied yes. Right after that she asked him if he could speak English, which was also replied with a yes. She must have been relieved that he could speak English, however she still struggled to get those sentences out of her mouth. I was thinking, what 6 year old little boy can talk German AND English fluently? But that wasn’t it…Somewhere halfway during the flight he surprised us by talking in Mandarin o.0 And his Mandarin was waayyyyy better than mine XD He appears to be half German and half Chinese attending an international school, which explains why he knows how to speak so many languages at that age. When the Chinese lady next to me asked him why he didn’t said he can also speak Chinese he responded: ‘I didn’t know you could speak Chinese’. Such a cutie pie, it reminded me of my little nephews. Luckily for the nice people sitting next to me and the music on board, I was getting rid of the idea to never take a transfer flight again as I was irritated by waiting for like almost 3 hours. Why the music on board you must be thinking? Well, they had a Korean channel…*UHU! You heard it!* Korean music which also happens to be the music I normally listen to! Big Bang *haruu harruuu*, Younha, Epik High, J-Walk, Seo In Young, Solbi and more! I only slept for 3 hours in the plane and I can’t sleep now in order to get rid of the possible jetlag.

10-01-09: Finally arrived at Shang Hai 12:10
It is cold in Shang Hai by the way, the taxi driver told me it started freezing since yesterday? It is -3 degrees or something. *Hoorayyy…not* And no, I didn’t get here all by myself...I called my parents *It was like 5 o’clock in the Netherlands? They must be so sleepy right now cause I called several times =P* And when you think that when you arrive at home you can relax, think again…I had to figure out how to get warm water. This lady came to help me, but she didn’t knew how either. So she called this ‘expert’ man to look at it. They have just left and so everything is working now, however it still is very cold inside. I’m sitting here with my coat still on and a little blanket. China may be less cold then the Netherlands, but we can heat the whole house. Here you have to experience the cold weather outside also inside the house. I turned on this air conditioner thing at 32 degrees, but I’m not really noticing any difference? Well, I have no Internet right now, which is why this will be posted later than 09-01-09, I’ll keep you guys updated! Starting to get a bit hungry, so I’m off on a mission to look for food and explore the neighborhood a lil bit. Zai Jian!

Update: it is evening now and other houses aren’t as cold as mine. So think I’m doing something wrong then? And the most annoying thing, there is Internet here…But I don’t know these people, they are friends of my sister-in-law’s dad *can you still follow me?* I just had dinner here since I am alone in Shang Hai. So I don’t want to be rude to ask if I can go on the Internet for a moment. I will look for an Internet café or something tomorrow.

Labels: china, shanghai

Written by XJR, at 5:58 PM