Ni hao!

Exactly one week after leaving home, I have finally had a moment to sit down and start my travel journal. Aside from the hectic nature of travel and settling in, I had to find a blog that is not blocked in China. Oh China, you and your censorship. I have so much to share that I don’t even know where to start. This first entry is probably just going to be an explosion of everything that has happened over the last few days. Bear with me. I’ll get better at this, I promise J

The Send Off- Mom and I pulled up to O’Hare right behind Nick. We unloaded and waited for everyone else to arrive. Dad met us there shortly thereafter. The boys (BOB, Roger, McCoy and Kevin) came to see Nick off. The group was a lot more civilized than the rag tag group of ruffians that showed up to see Wilder off last year. Lots of hugs and kisses goodbye, but no tears from me. I was too excited!

The Flight Over- There is nothing quite as disorienting as spending 13 hours on a plane that is following the sun. You start to lose track of time simply because your only possible activities (reading, writing, napping, watching movies) are all inherently time-bending. Have I been reading for 20 minutes or an hour? When we landed in Tokyo for our layover, it was only about 3pm but it felt like it was 1 or 2 in the morning. We stretched out in the airport and I bought some green tea ice cream (I was in Japan, I had to). Our flight from Tokyo to Beijing was only about 3 or 4 hours. I managed to stay awake until the food came, but after that I crashed. I was getting a headache from bring up so long. I can pull and all nighter and go without sleep if I have something to do, but I just cannot stay up for the sake of staying up when all I can do is sit.

Beijing- After a few quick prayers to Luggage Jesus (copyright Nick Padiak), we were lucky enough to have all of our bags make it safely from Chicago to Beijing. Thank goodness! If either of my bags didn’t make it, I would have been in big trouble (and possibly naked for a few days). We knew that we were meeting with our Lory, our liason from CCNU, at the airport. We had no idea what he looked like at all so we hoped that he would find us or have a really big sign. We didn’t have to worry. We walked out of the baggage claim area and found a sea of people waiting for their loved ones. Standing at least a head or two above the rest was Dan, waving at us. He made it safely from visiting with his friend. We piled into a big van/ mini-bus to take us to our hotel (thereby eliminating the risk of leaving one of us at the airport). We had a quick meal and then went right to bed.

Flight to Wuhan- Out group was split up and I ended up sitting next to two men who work at CCNU. One is a law professor and the other worked in some sort of management. The flight was fairly uneventful until we went to land. We were making our descent. The ground was getting closer and closer when all off a sudden we took a hard turn skyward. Quite unnerving. We went all the way up above the cloud cover before starting the descent all over again.

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