Flight and What Not

So. It's 5:30 PM on February 12th in Beijing, China. I'm here sitting in this rat's nest of a hotel room thinking to myself, 'What the hell did I get myself into?'

It was a weird feeling saying goodbye to my mom and pops at the airport, looking up and waving one last time. I walked through the gate, collected my personal items, and proceeded to the waiting area before getting on my flight. I was a little nervous at that point, but I wasn't too bad. You're just sitting there, ya know? Not really knowing what to think, what to expect. You're watching people shuffle around, come and go. It's just strange. I was there for about 3 hours I guess, met a nice Russian girl who ended up giving me a pretty sweet pen. Why is that important? It's not, but it was a nice pen. Anyways, got on the flight, and soon enough I was off to Moscow, Russia.

This was a good flight. 1. I had a window seat. You want this if you've never flown to a certain country before. It's cool lookin' outside at the lay of the land. 2. You're not sitting in the middle of people getting bumped and being forced out of the way when someone needs to get up. 3. I got seated next to a pretty Russian girl/woman. Hard to say how hold she was. I'm gonna go with mid to late 20's. Her English was not as good as the first Russian girl, but still decent. I decided to say hi from the start just to break the tension a little bit. It's much better than sitting there in an uncomfortable silence for 9 hours wishing you had said something earlier on. Funny girl. We had talked on and off, and before you knew it, she pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels. Being a silly American guy, I laughed while questioningly saying, 'Whattttt?' Haha. As expected, she offered me some, and at first I had to deny her. I mean, come on. Yeah, come on is right. How many times do you have the opportunity to drink with a Russian girl on an airplane while flying to Russia? And if you do, how often is it something other than vodka? So I said, what the hell? It was a strong drink, about 40% alcohol and 60% soda. But good. And amusing. Now I know what you're thinking. I got drunk, acted like a fool, and made an ass of myself. No, I didn't get retarded. I simply took my time with it and enjoyed the company of a stranger. Like I said before, good flight. I would much rather have some pretty girl sleeping on my shoulder, than some sloppy, elderly man who's likely to drool and snore. Fortunately, I avoided this on both flights.

I didn't sleep on the this flight at all. I was advised to avoid sleeping until it was night time in China. This way, your body would get used to sleeping at the correct time that much quicker. It seemed like good advice, so I followed it. It was worth doing this just to see the sun come up from an aerial view. It's pretty cool and very peaceful. After that, being on top of and in between clouds is really neat.

By the time my plane arrived in Russia, (about 12PM) I was exhausted, ready to collapse. I headed towards the next terminal I'd be leaving from, despite knowing that I was going to be in the Russian airport for nearly 9 hours. I just wanted to be in my terminal vicinity before passing out. That was easier said than done. My terminal was one of the very last ones, and this airport was massive. There was no end to it. It just....kept.....going. I had to of walked at least 1 mile and it felt like I walked 2. Now remember, I've been awake since 8:15 AM from the previous day and I've got on a backpack and carrying a laptop, both of which were getting heavier by the minute. I finally got to terminal F, but could not locate my gate. So I went back and forth a few times before giving up and deciding I could find it later when need be. I found a general region where I thought it might be, spread out on 3 or 4 seats, pressed up on my carry on luggage, and passed out. I was in and out of sleep for about 3 hours. My eyelids were feeling pretty heavy.

Again, very strange. Strange sitting amongst people that don't speak your language. I was really tired and kinda dazed. Sometimes the other languages can sound like your own, and other times it just sounds like a mix of vulgarities and obsceneties. After sleeping for a while, I got up and 'talked' to a few different people before discovering that the gate number was unknown until an hour before a flight's boarding time. I put talked in quotations because it was hardly talking with most of the people. I mostly got poorly, broken English so it's not so easy.

Russian airports are kinda crazy. Smoking is allowed all over. They have these big Winston machine things that I'm assuming attracts the smoke somehow because all smokers would stand by these. When I got lucky, I was able to find a seat a bit farther away from these areas. Alcohol is also allowed. You can walk around the airport drinking alcohol without any problems. Now I read that you could only carry on liquids, gels, and things that were 3.4 ounces or less. While that may be true, this does not hold true to items bought in duty free shops. Queue the duty free shop song Kramer and George sing on the way to the airport, haha. (Seinfeld. Come on, you should know this.) Geeze, it goes like this alright. 'I like to shop at the duty free shop, I like to shop at the duty free shop.' This is sung a few times over. It's a nice little jingle. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOh_rvXP_VY) Anyways, alcohol. As much as you want. I witnessed people carrying huge quantities in bags right on the plane, and busting it out whenever. I had no idea.

Not much else to tell in regards to getting on my plane. We had to step outside to get in a little bus like vehicle which took us over to our plane. Russia is freezing. Absolutely freezing. Their cold will make you into a little woman in about 30 seconds. I ignored my actual seat number at first and just sat in another window seat. This didn't last for long. Some Asians quickly informed me that I was in the wrong seat. I had already taken my shoes and jackets off, but moving wasn't that difficult. I just had to hop over a couple seats. Luckily, I had an aisle seat so it didn't matter that I was stuck in the middle row of seats. This flight took about 7 hours, the food wasn't as good, and I had a hard time seeing outside when we neared landing. I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of the great wall on top of some precarious mountain tops. Pretty cool. I saw a lot of mountains. I arrived in Beijing around 9:30 AM.

Look for my next post about life in Beijing thus far. I'll give you a hint. Not so much fun.

-Jeff