Ni Hao!

Luckily we have techy Jake on our side, here in Suzhou, and he figured out a way to get a proxy to get us onto the banned sites here in China.  Now hopefully that doesn't mean that we will all be hauled off to China jail, but in the meantime, I'm able to enjoy my facebooking and blogging at my leisure.
So.
I'm in China!!!!!
There are little random moments throughout the days when it just hits me, and it is just so bizarre that I am on the complete opposite side of the world from all of you.  Alright.  I will try to go through the past three days as accurately and briefly as possible.  Which will be difficult, timeline wise since we cross like 500 times zones in a matter of hours hah...

Ok so...Sunday, America time, we left Frederick around 11 and bussed to Newark NJ.  Watched UP on the bus and sobbed into Jamie's shoulder the whole time. Such a sweet, sweet movie.  Got to the Best Western, Newark style and Justine, Jamie and I went into the city to meet Meg for dinner.  I'm glad we did.  We had really good mexican and really good friend time.
Monday: America time.  Woke up at 6:30 ughhh to get to the airport.  Checked my bags.  They only weighed 62 lbs all together! So proud of my packing haha thanks mom.  Got through security smoothly and two hours later we were in the air.  15 hours to go.... I slept probably a total of 1.5 hours and watched four movies, "Julie and Julia", "My Sister's Keeper" (why I did this on a plane? no idea.), "Spiderman 2", and "Devil Wears Prada".  Rachel, on the other hand took 1 dramamine and 2 tylenol pm and was out the ENTIRE 15 hours.  She woke and said "Don't hate me but it felt like we were on the plane for 2 hours." I hated her.
Tuesday: China time.  Got to the airport, bussed two hours to Suzhou.  They told us that to avoid jetlag we needed to not nap and stay up til 9pm.  Didn't happen.  All of us passed out on the bus.  Got to the conference center at Suzhou.  Chinese men running everywhere with our luggage, our bus leaving with our luggage still on it, Arthur telling us we couldn't go to sleep for another 3 hours....lots of lost communication and sleep deprivation.  I have never felt more disconnected from my body.  Somehow in there we ended up getting Dim Sum at the restaurant in the hotel for a ridiculously cheap price (74 RMB for four people which breaks down to a little less than 6 American dollars...total. Yup. full dinner for a buck fifty. pretty schweet.) Finally passed out around 8:30 on our cement pallets in our room.

Ok clearly I am not doing a good job of creating a condensed version, so I'm gonna leave you with those first few days and update on the rest later tonight.  Enjoy!