Today (and yesterday) we boarded the plane and had to wait for a couple of hours on the runway, contributing to our 13-hour flight. I was going to be in the same row as Sarah on the flight, but a newly engaged couple wanted to sit in between us so Sarah had to move. For the duration of the flight, said couple were “snuggling” together under a blanket that they had courteously brought along. On the flight my food was kind of gross.. there was a scary shiny gray thing in the meat… needless to say, I didn’t eat finish the entrée while on the plane.
Once we landed in Beijing, the airport was very empty, and huge. It seemed as if the ceiling went on forever! While we had to wait to go through customs, Di Gao just slid on through because he’s a citizen of China. On our way to the bus (we were very late at this point), half of our group got separated. So half of us took the train to the bus and the other half was just catching up. Then we go to get our luggage, and find that Frank and Karen’s luggage was still in the good ole USA. After waiting to get things straightened out, and a quick nap later, we were greeted by a man holding a sign that said “PITTS”. We followed him outside after 2 attempts to leave the airport.
Although it was nighttime, you could still see the haze in the sky. That was my first experience with the pollution in China. We took the bus to the hotel, got settled in, and realized that it was too late for a real Welcome Dinner, so we went to a restaurant around the corner that specializes in porridge. It was very different, and we had to try and order things by ourselves because our table had no one that spoke Chinese. The translations for the food names were very bad, and didn’t really correspond to the actual meals being served. After that, we went back to the hotel to sleep and get ready for the next 2 weeks in China.