July 4, 2008

Getting to Beijing Children's Home

Our first task in our China Care summer experience was actually getting there....it took us almost a whole TWO DAYS to arrive to Beijing.

The tickets we (Erica Lin, Emily Hsu, and I) booked brought us from Boston to Chicago to Shanghai, and from there we had planned to fly to BaoJi. But those plans were disrupted due to the aftershocks of the earthquake that were still in the area. What made things worse was that American Airlines decided to keep us in Chicago for a whole 12 hours after we were supposed to have taken off. The first leg of our trip was to get from Boston to Chicago, which went fine, but meant that we had to leave for the airport around 3 AM....I seriously slept from the moment I sat in my seat until we had to get off the plane. I had no recollection of take off, landing, the complimentary beverage service, or anything else, haha.

Once we got to Chicago, we were definitely tired and wanted to be on our way, but that of course couldn't be the case. The problem apparently was a part of the plane that they were waiting to get fixed. That later turned into finding a replacement for that part of the plane, which then became finding another plane altogether, a whole half a day later. We actually even boarded the plane, and then were asked to get off because the problem was not fixed. I guess I would have much preferred to fly later than stall 35,000 km in the air, but the 12 hour delay was still no fun.

So after 2 meal vouchers, free diet coke, lots of reading, and some sleeping in awkard positions in the gate-area seats, we finally boarded and finally got to Shanghai. At midnight their time....

Luckily my uncle came to the rescue and picked us up there. He had originally found and booked us tickets to BaoJi, but when that ended up getting cancelled, he returned them and waited for us to arrive in Shanghai to get tickets to Beijing. The ticket counters weren't open until 6 AM, so we did some more waiting/sleeping/reading. Fortunately, we got tickets that left for Beijing from Shanghai at 11AM, which gave us time to have breakfast....at KFC :D

The domestic Chinese airline was run so much better than American, haha. All the flight attendants were these tiny, young Chinese women wearing perfectly clean and purple uniforms and a red bow tied at their collars, and they were all hovering over you to make sure things were taken care of. I was very impressed...and comfortable, haha.

But we finally arrived!!! Thank goodness....when we got to where we were staying, I swear I slept for 12 hours straight.

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