Plane Announcements

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Geo: 39.9165, 116.391

Yesterday was a long day but we have arrived in Beijing!!

Backup to Wednesday morning ~ we woke-up in still rainy LA and gathered our items to check-in early for our flight. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:50am and our shuttle dropped us off just after 8:15am ~ we were thinking the earlier we were, the better our seats might be. We were corrrect! We got fantastic seats for the13-hour flight and we were not even close to being in the front of the Air China line when we got to the airport. The Chinese people were there - with 3, 5, 10 bags per family - families of 2 and 3! They were shipping HUGE boxes back home, too. There was a large sign that said "$200 minimium fee for each additional bag weighing over 50 pounds." Air China was making the money yesterday!! We couldn't believe it.

We got checked-in, got great seats (Yippee), and then we were picked to be waived through TSA clearance ~ no taking off shoes, removing laptops and belts, or showing our liquids ~ just walk through and smile. And so we did. And it was nice. Kamie said it was because of my blonde hair in a sea of dark haired individuals but the TSA lady told him how pretty HIS hair was! HaHaHa

We then paid $25 to split a ham & swiss sandwich, a yogurt & two waters ~ the only breakfast option in this small Terminal 2 ~ which was for our flight and flights going to Hawaii. Every ten minutes we heard an announcement with "Mahalo" at the end. I kinda wanted to just go to Hawaii and skip the long flight to Shrimpville but alas, we are here now and it does look very intriguing but let's get back to that flight...

Great seats. There are six sets of "two" seats together on this huge plane. We got one. Yay! I had a window, Kamie had the aisle, we had tons of extra room and Kamie had massive leg room - like an aisle that wasn't an aisle - just for his leg. We were next to a bathroom that apparently noone knew about, we had first choice when they came around and asked "pork noodle or fried rice?" which ended-up being extra-eggy shrimp fried rice ~ not for me but that's okay, there was a roll, a salad, a cookie. It was all good. They fed us twice during the flight. First time was a choice between chicken and rice or beef and rice. I choose beef (good choice) and Kamie chose something that looked like chicken (no way would I have ate that but he did). I took pictures. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. We had water, Sprite, we were okay.

The overhead announcements this entire flight, by the way, were in Chinese... then English, supposedly. We only ever understood "Wadies & Gentemen" before the English announcements. The Chinese announcements were long ~ "who-I-yo-yo-me-bat-so-me-yo-me" etc f-o-r-e-v-e-r and then we would hear "Wadies and Gentemen, pwease return to your seats due to turbuence." The English announcements took about half as long so we couldn't help but wonder what was being lost in translation. The flight path was not what we expected at all this trip - straight up the coast of California, curve to the left over Alaska, just hitting the rim of the Artic Circle, through Russian airspace and finally down to Beijing. We were never far from land for long. I got a few pictures. We were instructed to close our windows once we hit Northern California and to open them again once we started to arrive into Beijing. A few people peaked out now and then (me included).

The in-flight entertainment was good but not excellent. I watched Maleficient. I liked it. Kamie watched Godzilla and then he got hooked on this Majong-meets-Bejewelled game and couldn't quit the rest of the flight. He was sorta obsessed but he never did beat the game. He didn't mention smoking one time so I let him be obsessed with his game. It apparently helped. He only went to the bathroom and smoked his E-cig twice. Good for him. I watched a couple of episodes of the Big Bang Theory, listened to a George Straight CD (not kidding - they had him and others), then Pearl Jam (yep, had them too), and played electronic Soduko which can be hard, btw. I was concentrating too hard on the Soduko and had to give it up without about 5 hours left. I fell asleep. Kamie woke me up saying "it's time to wake-up" about 2 hours later. He was fine with everything but me sleeping and him not. Little brat. Oh well. He did really good on this long flight and did not complain about his lack of cigarettes one time. I was really proud of him.

We got off the plane around 4:30pm December 4th. We had crossed the International Date Line so we gained a day and 13 hours from Missouri. It was actually the middle of the night to us but we made it through "foreigners" immigration, then took the train to baggage, then we were again waived through customs - we did not have to have ourselves or our bags checked. Coming out of the airport was our tour guide - Jason Yin. He said he is "real Chinese" - born and raised in Beijing - but he uses Jason for us. There were 17 people on our plane on this tour. Another 11 were to arrive from New York later in the night - 28 people total in our tour group. We were debriefed and then took the tour bus to our hotel. The ride from the airport to the hotel was interesting and beautiful. I will remark more about Beijing tomorrow. So far, so good! I am all smiles.

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