It's 2:28 am in the morning...sleepless in shanghai

We just woke up an hour ago, after fake sleeping for a while in bed. Boy, if this is jet lag, we've got it at its best.

We've only been here 2 nights and we've already been SUPER sensory overloaded. Here are some early observations about Shanghai.

1. they werent kidding when they said there was over a billion people here. no matter where you are at there seems to be millions of people. not kidding millions everywhere.
2. i've come up with a term that describes the driving and bike riding in this part of the world..."Casually Wreckless". our driver who picked us up at the airport was driving over 120 km/hr on an 80km/hr road! i dont know the conversion is from the km to the miles/per hour is but, it was crazy. he was swerving in and out of traffic, tailing motorcycles, faces oncoming traffic fearlessly, passing people at 60 km/hr on small streets, etc. mai kao and i after about 5 minutes of this looked at each other without saying a word, nodded and then clicked out seat belts. people cut each other off all the time...and it even seems like they even try to drive into other cars.
3. our campus is beautiful. it's gated and so it makes you feel closed off from the rest of crazy Shanghai. the center of campus is absolutely gorgeous, imagine a beautiful row of fully grown trees and then you've got campus, times 3. we have (i'm not kidding) like 30 basketball courts.
4. China is super dirty. there are times when you are walking down the road and then some random super stinky smell smashes you in the face. mai kao and i were in an open market (which was pretty cool by the way) and we saw this lady chopping a raw dead chicken right next to a piece of fried chicken. we laughed and thought about how grossed out Geu would get.
5. there is an alley way market that is right by our school that is dirty as heck. we encountered some pretty hilarious and nasty stakes for poker. how about live eel for anyone? we've also got snakes, killed meats of all kinds, and some crazy looking veggies.
6. i thought about buying a bike, but after seeing how reckless peeps are out here...i'm kind of rethinking the situation out.
7. the ground here is really really nasty. at any given moment there may be chicken blood mixed with some sort of poop, fish guts and water. its so gross that tonight i had a nightmare about tripping and falling on the ground. i woke up super grossed out and opened up my packed luggage case to get my sandals out. i'm wearing them right now. in my apartment.
8. major props to auntie jovan for the small towels...they were super needed.
9. we miss our friends dearly. many of our coworkers are recent college grads that are still in the super party mode. we realized we were old when we wanted to just to back to our apartment and relax.
10. life is going to be fast paced, crazy and fun. keep praying for us. when you are away from the body of christ you start to crave fellowship. it seems that whenever you have a conversation with someone you listen more intently to see if they are a believer too. its weird, but true.

josh out.