Transit (4)

6:40 PM - August 20, 2010 - Xi'an, China

My final flight was also the shortest, at around 1 hour and 40 minutes. But, like subsequent flights, I was fed a whole meal. This meal consisted of beef and noodles, along with a few Chinese stacks: Apple chips, a bread roll, and something called "Tremella & Pear & Medlar in Apple Drinks."


Tremella & Pear & Medlar in Apple Drinks. The packaging seems harmless enough.

I asked the couple sitting next to me "这是什么？" ("What is this?") to which they replied "银耳" ("Tremella"). I then asked "银耳是什么？" ("What is tremella?"). Their response? "银耳." Haha, this wasn't getting me anywhere, I thought, may as well eat it and stop asking questions.


Tremella. Up close, and very personal.

The texture was a bit like a jellyfish. It had virtually no flavor, but was sitting in unsweetened apple juice. I ate the whole thing so as not to embarrass myself. The couple found me quite amusing. I later found out exactly what tremella is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tremella. Yep, it was tree fungus. In apple juice. Still, it didn't taste bad.

The couple next to me and I had tried with varying degrees of success to have a conversation. They spoken very little English, and my small knowledge of Chinese extends only to greeting people and asking and answering simple questions. They smiled every time I tried to articulate an answer to their queries. The wife tried to tell me that her sister's daughter lived in America. Unfortunately, instead of saying "daughter" she kept saying "doctor." I opened my laptop, turned on my Chinese translation program and resolved the problem, teaching the woman the word "niece" in the process.

They asked if we could exchange numbers and emails. They said they would like to take me to dinner sometime so that I could have a real Xi'an experience. They were very nice and I hope to see them again soon.

At the airport in Xi'an, I shook the hands of my new friends and said goodbye. Waiting for me just beyond the baggage area were two young girls with a sign that said "Sean Hayden Drewery" in bold arial. They ushered me onto a waiting car.

This is the first, of what I assume will be MANY, MANY times I'll talk about Chinese driving habits. The man who drove, whose name I never got (he didn't say anything for the entire ride), was an aggressive driver, to put it mildly. In and out of traffic, blinking his lights and honking his horn furiously. He laughed when I slammed on my invisible passenger break. One of the girls, Xiao Liu (小刘）, later informed me to be cautious of cars and motorbikes while in China. "They NEVER stop," she told me.

I finally arrived at my new home, the Qi Xia Yuan Hotel (启夏苑旅馆). It is literally a hotel, not exactly what I had been expecting based on the brochure. Still, the room is nice, the bed is firm, the internet works, and the maids are helping me with my pronunciation. Now, if only there were more than one English language TV channel. Oh, well.


Qi Xia Yuan Hotel (启夏苑旅馆, qǐxiǎyuàn lǚguǎn lit. "Open Summer Garden Hotel"). My home in China.

Upon arrival, I informed American that I had arrived, laid my head down on a pillow, and slept for 12 hours.

Hayden

Transit (3)

1:50 PM - August 20, 2010 - Beijing, China

If, in the course of my lifetime, I ever say "I can't do this" or "I give up," I want you to remind me that I once, single-handedly, navigated the Beijing Capitol Airport. And after a 13 hour flight.

More on Beijing later. First, that flight.

Continental Flight 89 took off from Newark, New Jersey at 12:05 on Thursday, August 19. The airplane was new, and huge, the largest airplane I've ever been on.


Continental Flight 89. The flight attendant told me that the plane was brand new.

So, the flight was scheduled for 13+ hours, and the course took me right over the North Pole! Each seatback has a small, personal TV to keep us occupied. The TVs offered movies (about 50, a mix of old and new releases), TV shows (mostly from Showtime and the Discovery Channel), games (like Bookworm and Bejeweled), and a flight map/info that showed exactly where the plane was on its route. I passed over Canada, Greenland, Russia, and Mongolia on my way to China! To keep myself busy between naps and meals, I watched the film Grey Gardens (the movie, not the documentary) and...


Seatback TV Sets. I watched a number of programs during my flight.

...Frontier House! I loved that show! It really helped me prepare for China. I mean, they were surviving in a new place with absolutely nothing, at least I have markets I can shop at.

TV was, of course, only one of my distractions. I also got in a few short naps. Very short. Like, 3 hours total during the flight. We were fed 3 or 4 separate times while en route. I ate: pepper steak, rice, a cheese omelet, potato gratin, a tossed salad, a fruit salad, a hot dog, vanilla ice cream...seriously, I felt like the food cart was coming past my seat every ten minutes or so. And, honestly, the food was pretty good. I was very surprised.

The flight, as I said, lasted for over 13 hours. And never, once, in that time did the sun go down. Actually, from my perspective, the sun never went down. At all. For 22 straight hours. This was, quite literally, the longest day I've ever experienced.
My flight touched down in Beijing at 1:50pm on Friday, August 20. I arrived in Beijing 31 hours after I left Jacksonville, but with a travel time of only about 18 hours up until this point. I lept ahead in time by 12 hours!


Total Distance Traveled. The final mileage for my flight from Newark to Beijing.

The Beijing airport is massive. Huge. Gargantuan. Larger than any city I've ever lived it. Seriously, its massive. Also, there is no air conditioning. My flight disembarked, and we were herded through the first area, a large domed structure, mostly devoid of other people. This first section served as the immigration area where passports and visas are observed and stamped. After getting my passport stamped, I made my way, following a series of signs, to a train that would lead me MILES AND MILES away to the baggage claim area. MILES! I spoke with a woman at an info kiosk, showed her my itinerary print out, and she informed me that I would need to get my luggage in Beijing, go through customs, and then re-check my bag for my flight to Xi'an. I did so, stopping off to exchange money along the way. My very first trip through customs consisted of walking past a man in a uniform who nodded and smiled at me.

After leaving that section of the airport, I followed signs that lead me up an escalator, down a flight of stairs, and then onto a bus that would shuttle me to my next flight. The bus went, and this is no exaggeration, miles outside of the airport, through a small domestic area of the city, back up an on ramp, through a massive interchange, and then finally back into the airport. I had been scared of China during my flight, I had begun to regret my decision, I was worried I wouldn't be able to make it. But, sitting on that bus, passing small houses and billboards covered in Chinese characters, sitting beside a man to whom my only manner of communication was smiling, I had a sense of awe wash over me. I was in Beijing, and I had managed to travel there by myself. I was going to be just fine.

A porter met me as I was getting off the bus. He told me that I was the only person connecting to the Xi'an flight from Beijing and that Continental had sent him to make sure I that I made my flight. I'm not entirely sure how true that was, but he did lead me the rest of the way through the airport. It wasn't much further, no more trains or escalators or buses, just a short walk to security. He talked to me about America, about the difficulty Chinese have in going there, and about how he was saving money to go. You can imagine that since our currency is work 7 times theirs', a trip to the US would be quite expensive. He helped me check my bag and told me that it was overweight. The sign said that the cut off was 20 kilos, and my bag weighed 50 pounds. At a conversion of about a half a kilo to a pound, I was over by quite a bit. He told me he had them waive the fee for me, but later asked that I just pay him the fee directly. $40 is a lot of money is China, I smiled at him and looked him in the eye, and I said "How about I give you a tip for helping me?" He smiled at me as I handed him the equivalent of $10. He pointed me toward my next gate and we parted ways.

I passed through security and made my way to Terminal 24 to wait for my final flight to Xi'an...


The Floating Boy. Just the boy from the safety instructions on the plane. I thought he was cute.


Hayden

Transit (Interlude)

Hayden is alive and well and badly needs to shower, sleep, and brush his teeth about a half dozen times.

More later.

Hayden

Transit (2)

9:16 AM - August 19, 2010 - Newark, New Jersey

If you fly into New Jersey on a Continental Express flight and plan to leave New Jersey on a standard Continental Airlines flight, you will be met with the conundrum of traversing the Newark, New Jersey Airport. Express flights land at Concourse A, while standard flights leave from Concourse C. Its as simple as a long, brisk walk across Newark, right? No. You're lead down a hallway, ushered on by ill-conceived signs, and then herded onto a bus. The bus will take you through what can only be described as Mad Max-style post-Apocalyptic waste lands, under exposed steel beams, through dark tunnels. What waits on the other side? Concourse C, of course: A mirror image of Concourse A, down to the opposing terminal numbers and seat layouts. That bus took me down the rabbit hole. I'm in Unnewark now (Oldwark? Nah.). This is surely the first of many gateways to Asia. I should have known I would need to go outside of my world in order to make it to China; I mean, my plane is headed North, not East...

Also, I've been awake approaching 24 hours.

My first flight had free muffins. So, yeah, that was kind of awesome.

Transit (1)

5:08 AM - August 19, 2010 - Jacksonville, FL

The check-in process was a bit confusing. The very helpful Continental Airlines Lady saw I was struggling and suggested I try swiping my passport to pull up my reservation. That didn't work, however. I panicked for a moment. "What if my flight isn't today?" "What if my tickets were canceled?" I mean, after the day I had yesterday, I was fully prepared for the possibility that everything would find a way of coming apart at the last minute.

The aforementioned Continental Airlines Lady located my confirmation number and checked me in for my flight. I put my bag on the scale to check it. 60 pounds. She told me to shove some of the stuff in my carry on and save the $25 fee. I did and left to juggle my carry-ons through the security process.

Now, waiting. This is what travel is about. Waiting in this odd limbo between lives. A series of planes, a series of seats near a terminal, a series of wi-fi connections give way to a completely different world. For now, I'm in this in-between place. In one hour's time, I'll be on a flight to Newark, New Jersey.