The Adventure Begins!!!!

So, I'm here. You could say I got here safe and sound, but I wouldn't. Both were tested on the journey, which I can only hope is an indication of what I've gotten myself into.

To start, I decided that a 6:25 am departure (which means that I had to get to Pearson by 4 or so) meant that I should stay up all night, as I tend to have difficulty getting up very early in the morning. Since Mom drove me to Kitchener early in the day, Graham kindly offered to drive me to the airport from there. We arrived around 3:30, so I just chilled out for a little while. Thankfully it wasn't a long wait to get on the plane. As I was preparing to sit in my assigned seat, I was asked by a lovely couple if my name was Colin. I turns out that John and Christina are the middle school P.E. teacher and the school nurse. (If you were wondering, the guy at the check-in station told them about me, since it is rather uncommon to find 3 people going to Ulaanbaatar together from Toronto.) After an uneventful hour on the plane, we landed in Chicago for a 5 hour layover.

Chicago proved to be one long attempt to prevent ourselves from dying of boredom. It was mostly filled with taking turns walking around the airport to find that it held nothing of interest. I think that the breakfast from McDonalds qualifies as the highlight. After those dreadfully boring 5 hours, we got to sit through a 13 hour flight. If I can offer any advice, it would be this - don't do it. It was made tolerable by their selection of adequate movies, my MP3 player and the 2 empty seats beside me, that allowed me to lay down, although I really only slept for a total of 2.5 hours, and never more than 45 min. at any time. I must admit it was pretty cool to look down and see the Arctic Ocean. And if I fly over a country, does that count as having been in it?

We arrived in Beijing at 4:00 pm local time. John and Christina decided to spend the available 3.5 hours checking out the inside of a hotel room. I decided to be a little more adventurous, and took a bus downtown to see Tien'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. Maybe going into a city that I don't know, have no map for and can't communicate with any of the people sounds like a bad idea, but I survived, and got some pretty good pictures. I took a little longer than expected, and found myself getting back to the airport a little after 8:00, with my plans set to depart at 9:10. I ran frantically through the airport, making several wrong turns in the process. I got to the counter around 8:30 to find that the flight was delayed. It remained delayed for another 2.5 hours..... and then it was cancelled. It seems that they forgot to fly the plane TO Beijing, so there was no plane for us to board. The only 2 international planes MIAT has were in Seoul and Yakutsk, Russia. Finally, the airline decided to put us up in a hotel.

As we're all aware, Beijing is preparing for the 2008 Olympics. This means that there is a lot of construction. Someone forgot to tell the country they don't have to build 4000 new office buildings to host them. The city is going to double in size in the next 6 years at the rate they are building. Included in this construction is the building of about 4000 new hotels. Of course, the hotels take guests, desipte not being totally built. I had to share a room with a kind gentleman in his 40s or 50s, who did not speak a word of English. Thank God I'm good at charades. we managed to communicate somehow. My first order of business was to have a nice, hot shower. Nothing doing. I took a shower, but the water was a few degrees below the temperature of icewater. The washroom was an interesting situation. It was preceded by a small dressing room, and was itself the same size as the bedroom. The shower was merely attached to the wall, with a curtain to separate itself from the toilet and sink. What is odd about this is that they had a room that looks like it was designed to be a shower on the other side of the shower. Instead, they have an empty room surrounded in frosted glass. Also I found it convenient that they put the drain in the highest point on the floor. I can only guess this is because physics don't work the same way in China. I finally got some sleep in an amazingly comfortable bed, only to get a call at 3:30 am to tell us we need to go to the airport to board the plane so it could depart at 6:05. They lied again. The plane didn't get to Beijing until 6:30. After waiting for 3 hours, at 3 different gates, the finally boarded the plane. We lifted off at 8:00, and set out on a beautiful 2 hour flight. I mean it. I was given a window seat, and the scenery was fantastic. First mountains, then desert, then mountains again.

We got here at 10:00, and I was given the day to get settled. After some unpacking, John, Christina and I went out to buy some food. Apparently, you are required to speak English, French, Korean, Mongolian, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Japanese in order to do your grocery shopping. That is, if you want to know what you are buying. I took some random guesses (such as deciding what kind of milk to buy. It comes in 1.5%, 2.5%, 3%, 4% and 6%), and a few educated ones (I figure that the pickles labelled Ogorki are probably Gherkins), plus some helpful advice. I was rather impressed that most of the foods I wanted were available at the markets.