Fri, June 27, 2008

Well, we had to be on the bus at 7:30am to head to the Beijing International Airport. I woke up at 6:30, grabbed my things, and was down to eat breakfast before 7am. Then, we had checkout from the hotel, which caused some conflict because it was taking so long per person so Lee got frustrated and really got mad at the staff saying we will leave at 7:30 even if we did not check out. Then, a Chinese man kept trying to cut us in line, and even after being shoved aside by Benjamin repeatedly, and yelled at by Lee, he still cut his way in. We were not happy with him at all. Apparently, he called Lee a “mad man” which Lee agreed with.

Airport check-in took some time because it wouldn’t be open until 9am, and we were all there at 8am. Finally, we figured out how to get the self-check-ins to work and just had to wait for our bags to be weighed and tagged. My bag was 2.6 kilos over so I threw away my hangers and Sunday shoes (they were old and had holes on the bottom), then put a bit more in my carry-on (which really doesn’t fit well). My weight matched Brock’s (who is my bag buddy) and together our bags weighed 23 kilos, which is the maximum weight. It all worked well thankfully!! We got through, saw the huge size of the airport as we took the tracks to the security check, and had almost two hour to wait. I wandered around trying to find a china patch (which does not exist – not even a patch exists here. Finally, I ran into Cameron, Zach, Brad, and Jessica and we bought a pizza from Pizza Hut to get rid of our extra yuan. We barely had enough – so it worked perfect!

On the flight, of course it was long, but really good movies were playing like “27 Dresses” and “Jumper” and “Horton Hears A Who” so I was content. At one moment, they had to turn off all the power on the airplane due to electrical problems in the back – there was a consistent, random dinging that was so loud and annoying that wouldn’t stop. They basically just turned of the TVs and music. No big deal. I found some comfortable positions to sleep in, but it was impossible to actually fall asleep. I wasn’t tired … which will be bad when jet lag finally hits me since China has a 14-hour time difference. Gotta love flying!

When we reached San Francisco, we had a four hour layover which is never fun. I mainly just sat around, then had lunch at Burger King with the group. The flight went well and we made it back to Provo. Now, I’m at my sisters and ready to begin a new project: Stadium of Fire.

Oh, I guess I should say that due to weight, half the luggage was left in San Fran, which included about 3/4th of the personal bags. I have to wait for mine … sigh … no luggage for me yet. Good thing I have most of my souvenirs in my carry on!