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Published: February 27th 2009
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The flight from LA was one of the more comfortable flights I've taken. Luckily many people aren't heading this direction so I had a row to myself to do as I pleased. Upon take off I was playing with the inflight entertainment and got a sneak preview of our estimated route, which flew us right over Alaska. Little tough to do since I was having a tinge of homesickness. With 12 hours ahead of me I settled in and opted to watch some movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and a fat Russell Crow.
By hour 6 I had exhausted the supplied movies and been fed twice. I kept attempting to open my window shade to peek out at Alaska below me, got a few blinded glimpses, but decided my time would be best spent napping. By hour 7 or 8 I was tired of attempting to nap and re-watched a movie and checked out our current location on the radar. Impressed to see that we were above Siberia so I snapped a few photos and went back to the movie...
Finally as we were approaching Beijing I was glued to the landscape, very excited to take in my first impressions
Mountains
This is what Chinese moutains look like from 38000 feet and a ground speed of 541 mph. of China...the landscape is littered with rippled mountains that lack snow and greenery, but they impressively seem to continue forever. Houses were carefully tucked into the crevices, minding to stay close to the rivers, or were they roads? Some mountains were tattooed by the lurking mining operatives; layers stripped away exposing varying colors. As my digital map in the seat back ahead of me counts down miles, the mountains grow more fierce and lose their carefully formed rows and begin to grow atop on another. Roads weave impressively into the mountains and houses brave the altitude and band together in the crevices towards to the tops. Dams are a reoccurring theme, withholding copious amounts of brilliantly colored water. My electronic map is now indicating we are exiting the mountains and will be descending onto green pastures within moments. The mountains crescendo and then flatten into nothing. Splatterings of buildings with blue and red roof tops stand out against irregular geometric fields of brown. Not the image I was holding for Beijing. Long stretches of freeway with elaborate figure eights emerge. We make a wide turn and begin our descent to the airport. Buildings begin to forfeit details as we approach.
Large Lego-shaped apartments are suddenly abundant, piles and piles of them. It is as if the Chinese know no other building shape. I can see a Simpson-esque nuclear reactor in the distance, still we are approaching. Our plane is catching pockets of wind causing us to dramatically drop every 12-15 seconds, which at Disneyland would have caused me to squeal with delight, but on the Boeing 777 it gives me a slightly different feeling.
After some shuffling around in a forgettable manner I make my way to the domestic terminal where I will be catching my connecting flight to Chengdu City. The airport is not as bustling as I imagined it would be, but I suppose it is for the best. After a few hours of people watching I board the last plane and settle into my seat. After a 12 hour flight the 2 1/2 hour flight seemed like a joke. I quickly fell asleep and awoke in time to catch our descent into Chengdu. After a while of frightful waiting, my bag shows up (on a different turn style than the rest of the flight's bags), and I exit into the hundreds of impatiently waiting Chinese patrons.
Luckily, the coordinator from my school spotted me right away, Daphne, and she corralled me outside into the waiting car. 45 minutes later I was standing in the middle of my new home for the next 4 months. I unpacked the necessary items, tried to figure out the toilet (it wouldn't flush, but I figured that could wait till morning) threw some sheets and blankets on the hardest bed I will ever sleep on, put some Arrested Development on, and fell asleep with my alarm set for 7:00am...I was told by Daphne I would be picked up and taken to the hospital where they would do a blood test...I thought that would be a piece of cake...I was mistaken.
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