Traveling halfway around the world

Friends, family, and colleagues,

We arrived safely yesterday evening to Shanghai-Pudong International Airport at 5:10 pm local time. There is a 12 hour time difference, in which we are 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. I wished my mother a happy mother's day this morning only to be informed it was still Saturday back in the US. Oh well, better to be early than late, right?

Overview of the JourneyThe journey started out Friday morning by getting on a plane in Gainesville at 7:40 am that flew to Atlanta. From there, I met up with my advisor, Dr. Mathews Paret at the terminal. We had a 5 hour flight to Seattle which was uneventful. We landed at 12:00 local time (3:00 pm EST) and grabbed a late lunch. There was a 2 hour layover, which was used to charge devices, catch up on email. We boarded the plane around 2:00 pm local time and we had a flight time of about 12 hours. However, traversing 9 time zones, we hardly lost any daylight. Both Dr. Paret and I tried to sleep on the plane to mitigate the jetlag with limited success. We landed in Shanghai-Pudong International Airport at 5:10 pm local time (my body still thinks it's 5:10 am at this point). 

Windmills could be seen out the window in Shanghai. 

Customs and Immigration
We cleared immigration with no problems. Both our visas were in order. The process itself was very streamlined. We cleared customs with a few problems. They wanted to quarantine the seeds we brought for 7 days, which we complied with their demands. We expected that something like this could happen, so we had a contingency plan for if it did. We shouldn't need it for another two weeks anyway. We also have seed that we may ship if they aren't released from quarantine. They'll likely screen for any pathogens, which, with such a small number of seeds, it's doubtful they'll find anything. (Gotta love that Type II error, right epidemiology friends?). 

Travel by car to Nanjing We were picked up by our contact, Dr. Pingfang Li and her driver. We then proceeded to drive an additional four hours from Shanghai to Nanjing. There were a lot of buildings and cranes in Shanghai itself. We also passed a countless number of trucks which were hauling anything and everything. There is a lot of growth and development in both Shanghai and Nanjing.

We got in around 10:00 pm local time. We checked in, settled down and ate a (very) late dinner. Our bodies were ready for an early lunch, so we didn't notice anything amiss. We are scheduled to do some touring today after lunch. I'm hoping that my next post will be on first impressions and social/cultural differences between my home and China.

Mason

P.S. I need a sign-off phrase or some catchphrase for the end of these. If you have a good one, leave it in the comment section! As always, preferential consideration will be given to puns.