China - Day 1 - The Flight

Well, we made it to China, but damn that was a long flight. It was pretty much a 24 hour door-to-door affair, and over 75% of that was on a plane. The flight, as scheduled was actually pretty ideal: Quick hop to DC, an hour there, and then straight on to a 14 hour flight to Beijing. Things went swimmingly until we sat down on the plane in DC. We got situated and someone flirty french guy offered to buy Alexa's sandwich for either $10,000 or his liver. Women have it all - no one ever offers to give me internal organs for buy my sandwich. hmpha. Anyway, I strangled the Frenchman with my iPod cord and sat back down for take off. And sat ... and sat ... and sat ... we sat on the damn plane for 4 hours *before* our 14-freaking-hour flight. We got all of the random excuses you might expect.

Hour 0.5 - "Maintnance is checking the plane, but we should take off soon"
Hour 1 - "It's not mechanical."
Hour 1.5 - "It has something to do with the air conditioning."
Hour 2 - "Can't fix the air conditioning, but it's ok, because now we're going to fly over siberia instead of the North pole"
Hour 2.5 - "Well it's 800 miles further, so we need more fuel"
Hour 3 - "OK, we're getting the fuel, leaving shortly."
Hour 3.5 - "Opps, we need to *re-arrange* the fuel to balance the load."
Hour 4 - "Ok there appears to be a 3 headed dragon having sex with Linsay Lohan on the run-way. Oh my god, look at what it is doing with it's second head! The Horror!! ..."

OK, that last one was fake, but the rest were real. I wonder about "Re-arranging" fuel (did they switch to unleaded?), and why we needed new freon in the A/C to fly over the north pole, I will never know - and we discussed it for at least 5 hours yesterday. At any rate, we eventually took off, and had a relatively pleasant, if really freaking long flight. They gave us a "Friendship Package" to make up for the wait - basically a form that you mail in and, maybe, get some kind of voucher. I slept for maybe an hour or 2, translated the first 3 pages of Harry Potter 3 in to Spanish (brujo = wizard), read 150 pages of Peace Like a River and watched parts of "Charlie Wilson's War", "27 Dresses" and "Jumper".

China is good so far, but I haven't seen enough to say much. We arrived, checked in (the bellhop liked - and maybe tried to buy - my jacket), ate dinner with the group (the food was cold, but we were 5 hours late), wandered Beijing for 15 minutes and slept. The new airport is awesome. Beijing isn't as dense as I imagined (I was thinking "Lost in Translation" for some stupid reason), and the people in my group seem nice even in their jet lagged state.

We're off to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City today. This morning is gray and smoggy, but Alexa and I both slept for 7 or 8 hours and it looks like the internet works, so I'm happy. It looks like wildfiring itself is unavailable in China (no wonder my readership is holding steady at 7), but I can still post and I'll start messing with pictures soon enough (Probably moving to flickr, btw).

Anyway, we're happy to be here, and I'll post something more substantial (as in with more substance, maybe not longer) tonight.