Long Travel Day

Saturday morning, around 9am, my (ex) fiancée and roommate dropped me off at the airport. I flew from LAX to SFO on a 11:40 a.m. flight and was to get on a flight from SFO to Beijing at 1:55. However, the second leg was delayed- very delayed- turns out the technicians found something wrong with the aircraft during servicing and they had to wait for another aircraft to come in that could accommodate the number of passengers and handle the flight. I wasn’t too annoyed as I would rather wait four hours to get on a safe plane then leave on time and plummet to my death.

The second flight was 12 hours long with a horrible entertainment selection – Coach Carter, Bridget Jones Diary 2, and a few random t.v. shows. They were supposed to show Sideways but there was something wrong with the video, hence BJD2, which is not a terrible movie in and of itself, but I think I’ve seen it 3-4 times on previous airline flights. I learned not to choose a window seat on a long international flight as getting up to go to the bathroom is a pain. . but maybe it’s always a pain because if you sit on the aisle you still have to get up for other people to get out to use the bathroom or walk around. Anyways, it was not so horrible as I was sitting next to a Cantonese speaking family, the grandma and mom were sitting in my row and the father and kids in the row behind me. The little kid kept on kicking the back of my chair, so I looked back a couple of times and finally the grandma took pity and put the boy in his place. So most of the flight was kick free.

We arrived in Beijing around 8 or 9pm, Sunday June 19th. Luckily, NSF had arranged for someone to pick us up and take us to the university housing we are staying in. We had to wait an hour or so for the other students on late flights to get in. We rolled up at the China University of Mining and Technology an hour later. By the way, the pollution is as bad if not worse than I remembered with haze so thick you can cut it like a knife and making L.A.’s June gloom seem like a light mist. Being the OCD person that I am, of course I had to stay up later to unpack all of my things. Here’s a photo of my room.





Not bad, two beds, AC (that I haven’t figured out how to work), mini fridge, tellie with a lot of channels, big closets, and my own bathroom with a western toilet. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring photos to decorate my room with so I will have to go to the store to buy some things to make the room more homey. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. unable to sleep anymore, maybe a little jetlagged but not terribly. I think my internal clock will be readjusted pretty quickly. I think it’s tougher on the way back then the way here. Orientation which goes all week, doesn’t start for another hour and a half, so I may go walk around outside a bit to kill time. Hopefully I will be able to get internet set up soon so I can post regularly.