Well….I made it . I am writing this post from the Konall office. It took FOREVER to get here, but I am already in awe.

I started the voyage on the 19th after 3.5 hours of sleep. I woke up and my dad took me to Los Angeles International Airport. I was soo tired after a night of celebrating at Valentino’s and then a suitcase packing-fest (or mad dash depending on how you look at it) that when I woke up in the morning, I was unable to stay awake and fell asleep while standing in the shower. I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and had no trouble checking my bags or clearing security.

The flight from LA to Vancouver was uneventful. I slept a little, read a little from The Kite Runner, and listened to my iPod.

Vancouver was no fun. They were way too serious. I had to fill out 6 forms just to transfer flights (Duration of stay box – umm….under an hour). They were overly thorough in their questions, and I got 2 random checks while walking to the gate during which they hounded me about how much money I was carrying, what kind of bills, etc. Jeez! I thought it was bad in LA.

There were a ton of Asian people in the terminal, which surprised me, but no restaurants. I wound up eating a cold sandwich from $tarbuck$.

The flight from Vancouver to Beijing was LONG! They had 3 meals (which were all bad except for the instant cup-o-noodles that they gave us at the end), 3 movies (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, some Chinese film which was really good, and Monster in Law), and a ton of TV shows (simpsons, star trek, some discovery channel stuff, news, etc.).

I spent most of the flight reading, watching the movies, or listening to my iPod. The one thing I didn’t do was sleep. The main reason for this had nothing to do with me being insanely tired, but with the fact that I was waiting for it to get dark and it never did. We must have been following the sun because for the 14 hour flight (arriving at 3pm Beijing time), it felt like it was 12 noon the entire time!!!! Very erie. Anyway, by the time the flight was over, I was a bit tired to say the least.

There was a thick fog in Beijing. I couldn’t see the ground until right before the plane landed. As I stepped off the plane, I expected it to be really cold, but it was warm and VERY polluted. I felt like I was standing down wind of a camp fire the entire time. I thought this might have just been because we were out by the planes, but it continued inside the terminal and everywhere we went. I was told that the pollution in China was bad, but no worse than a major city like Los Angeles. OK….I have been dealing with that my entire life. Well…..that isn’t true at all. It is a lot worse.

China also had a lot of forms to fill out (customs, quarantine, border control, entry info, exit info), but it went much smoother. I didn’t say a word to anyone along the entire time….I just handed in my forms and went through. I was a bit nervous as they wanted my local address and I wasn’t sure what it was. I wrote “none” on the form and that must have been acceptable. I found my bags and left customs to find a Chinese guy from the school named Sam waiting for me with a sign.

Sam spoke some English (not very good but enough to carry on some form of conversation). We grabbed a bus from the airport, which is outside of the city, to central Beijing. I was the only white person on the bus out of 50+. None of the writings or announcements on the bus were in English. Once in central Beijing, we took a taxi to the train station.

Along the way, I was surprised at how many “American” places they have here. I saw 2 KFCs, a number of Mc Donald’s, Pizza Hut, and every other type of fast food you could imagine.

The train station was a riot. The station was HUGE! Far bigger than any station I have every seen. The cab driver dropped us off on the top floor, but we needed to go to the bottom floor to buy tickets. Thanks! To enter the ticket room, they needed to control your ID. Sam got tickets for a train that left an hour after we arrived. We then entered the departure area. They checked tickets, x-rayed baggage, and controlled IDs again. We entered the waiting room for the train to Shijiazhuang, only to find about 400 people waiting (and all the 100 seats occupied). Sam had me wait for a bit and then came back with another girl. She lead us to another room were Sam paid more money and we went through a back entrance with construction workers, down to the lower floor again, and onto the platform. I think that this was some kind of bribe….pay the train works more and you don’t have to wait with the masses, but get to be first on the train, get the primo overhead space for you bags, etc. By this point I was TOTALLY lost in terms of not understanding any of the symbols or anything the people around me were saying. I was SOOOO glad to have Sam there helping me.

I thought that most of the signs (especially in Beijing) would be in both Chinese and English. At the airport they were, but at the train station, and especially on the street, they definitely were not. During the bus ride from the airport to central Beijing (50min), the taxi to the train station (15 min), and waiting for the train (55 minutes), I didn’t see a single other white person (and I wouldn’t for the rest of the night until getting to the Konall Office).

The train ride was about 3 hours. The first stop was Shijiazhuang. The seats on the train were all assigned, and the cars were numbered which made finding your place very easy. There was not a ton of storage space on the train, but we were the first ones on the train and were able to put everything except my biggest suitcase overhead. We wound up sitting on my big suitcase. The seats were in a 3 by 3 club configuration on either side of the aisle, and the girls across from
us were not happy to have to deal with my huge suitcase. During the train ride, I was clearly a focus of attention. At one point, the 5 other Chinese people in my row were talking in TERRIBLE English with me, the 3 people behind us were turned around listening in, the 3 people in front of us kept looking back at me, and the 5 on the other side of the aisle were staring at me. I felt very odd getting so much attention while I just talked about where I was from and what I did…..but they clearly loved hearing it (from a white person).

The people definitely did not abide by western standards of behavior. The girl across from me at one point leaned over the table and spit a partially masticated piece of apple onto the table and left it there. The girl on the side of her spit up a ball of phlem and left it on the table. Everyone stared at me and didn’t afford me any privacy. About 4 groups of people occupied the last two seats on the other side of the bench before the real ticket holders arrived. It was very strange. Also, everyone on the train it seemed was eating bowls of soup. Our car had a hot water tap and people would continuously go through and fill their tea cups and soup bowls with scalding hot water and then carry them along the swaying train trying not to spill any burning water on other passengers. About 8 different vendors with carts full of stuff kept walking through the aisle trying to sell us stuff. They had carts full of soup, tea, sushi, books, cakes, fruit, nuts, etc. Each one had something different, and they came through once every 20 minutes with the same stuff.

When we got to Shijiazhuang, we took a taxi to the Konall office and met Aaron, the one who set up my program, and Michael, my teacher. Aaron is an American from Colorado who has been living here for over a year. Michael is from Shijiazhuang and knows a bit of English. The four of us went out and got a quick bite to eat. I had some beef over rice with vegetables that was REALLY good. Aaron was very helpful in filling in the details about how the program works and what I will be doing. I spent the night in a guest room at the KCE office. I was sooooo beat from the ordeal–waking up in Santa Monica, California at 430am on the 19th and arriving in Shijiazhuang, China at 930pm on the 20th–that I feel asleep right away.

Tomorrow we move me into my new apartment.