The travel to Beijing was one of the most interesting journeys I have ever taken. The longest flight I’ve ever taken was no longer than three hours so 16 hours and then another 3 killed me. I was awake for the first 8 hours and that killed me. I thought I could easily power through the fight awake but that was definetly not the case. I started the flight our watching Black Swan to pass the time and then I followed that with Barber Shop 2. If anyone saw me watching the two movies, probably thought I was crazy because I was crying at the end of both.
Now about 5 hours in, I began to play bejeweled. After a dinner (or lunch I can’t tell if it was day or night since the sun was always up) I had to wonder to find NyQuil tablets to knock myself out. After taking the pills it took about another two hours to kick in. The time seemed to be moving SO SLOWLY. I was starting to regret getting on the plane. I had to ever so often get up and stretch my legs.
Landing and trying to board the second flight was nothing short of a nightmare. At first we were standing in an extremely long line to get through customs. The time was quickly ticking down, when we looked up we had 20 minutes until boarding. We had to send Tommy up to the front to beg for us to pass the 200 people in line. The fiasco didn’t stop there. We still had to go through customs. Being American did not seem to help as we were stopped and held at just about every checkpoint. When we looked up we had 15 minutes until the plane was scheduled to take off. Of course we were extremely far from our gate. We had to take a cart and run a mile to make it to our gate- just to see that the plane didn’t even start boarding.
Sixteen hours and then another three has really killed me but I hope to have enough energy to explore the city tonight!
Shining Future
Equity Through Education