If you haven’t read part 1 then you’re gonna want to do that first. 🙂
Where did we leave off? Oh yes…
When I reached my gate, it looked like a ghost town, less than 10 minutes before takeoff. Wouldn’t that have been cute if I’d missed my flight! I got on the plane and my seat was in the back near the bathroom. This plane had to have been at least 3 times bigger than my first flight, which for some reason I wasn’t expecting. My seat was probably one of the worst ones. I got another window seat, but the problem with this one was that there was a strange triangular gap between the seat and the wall/window. In other words, if I wanted to take a snooze my only option would be to snuggle up to the Chinese dude in the seat next to me, who was either antisocial or afraid of foreigners. He didn’t utter a word to me the entire flight.
Take off quickly became my favorite part of a flight, despite the fact that I felt like I left my stomach on the ground, and it was even slightly anxiety inducing. I love looking down at the world below as it gets smaller and smaller. The downside is going through the clouds though, that turbulence freaked me out a bit.
Once in the air, it was time to decide what I would do for the next 15 hours. I figured I would watch movies the whole way there, but this cheap ass flight didn’t even have screens! I was disappointed that I couldn’t even watch the map unless I checked the screen in the front of the plane. And I started to get hungry since Starbucks doesn’t hold you over for that long. Lucky for me, it was meal time.
There were two choices, fish with rice and chicken with noodles. I hate fish and love noodles so you know which one I went with. What an unpleasant surprise! The chicken had no flavor (ever heard of salt??) and the noodles were bigger than Udon with an unrecognizable sauce. Not to mention it was a small portion. I don’t even remember what the side dish was. I ate a bit and then decided to wait until the snacks came around later. Only they never did. I thought planes are supposed to serve peanuts and cracker jacks!! Welp, they in fact, did not! They served that “dinner” at about 5pm and then NOTHING ALL NIGHT UNTIL 3AM! Around 11pm I asked the flight attendant for a snack and she said something I couldn’t understand. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands and go find the snacks myself! That and I needed to use the restroom.
I asked the Chinese dude to let me out of there, and I wandered to the front of the plane where the food is. I saw a bunch of passengers hanging out in there, seems I wasn’t the only hungry one on board. We were told that another meal would be coming later. I was so angry. Someone offered me some chocolate, but you know, don’t take candy from strangers! I declined and went back to my seat. When I got there, someone in front of me was EATING! He had APPLES! He had BANANAS! I was so envious and that’s when I realized that you could bring your own snacks in the plane. What can I say, first time flying, how the hell was I supposed to know?! So I sat there salivating and watching him eat.
At 11pm is also when the sun started to come up. We were flying over the North Pole, so I guess no darkness for us! I looked out and I may or may not have seen Santa’s house below! Or maybe it was just a mirage. Can you see a mirage in the cold? I know for sure I saw some ice caps. I snapped some pictures like an excited tourist.
Later another subpar meal was served, I didn’t like it but I ate it up! I was starving!! I had some water and listened to my iPod (lol back in THOSE days). Pretty soon I needed to get up for the bathroom again. My Chinese friend beside me was asleep so I whispered “hey, I need to get out”. He didn’t budge. I tried again and nothing. Then I decided I would just wait until I got to China. After about 20 minutes I found that that wasn’t going to be possible. I knew what needed to be done. I poked the guy. NOTHING!!! I was doomed!!! I sat for a bit longer, and suddenly, he woke up as if he was frightened awake from a bad dream. Thank god! I took my chance and got the heck out of there for a bathroom break and to stand up, because being smothered my in seat was hurting my legs!
At this point I remembered I was supposed to be meeting a girl from my University named Maeve for the flight from NYC. I had completely forgotten since I was so late getting to the gate. I decided I would try and find her, so I took a walk around the plane. The plane had mostly Chinese people so it was easy to spot her, only to my dismay, she was either sleeping or crying or both. I didn’t really know her so I didn’t bother to try and “wake” her. I just went back to my seat and figured I would find her later when we landed.
Finally, when I looked out the window, I saw mountains instead of ice caps. We were nearly there! I was getting exhausted since I slept for maybe an hour of the flight, and was completely confused about what time it was! When we started to land I could no longer see anything below. Honestly I don’t know how the pilot even saw where the runway was! I couldn’t see didley squat!
After landing we exited the plane. I was surprised since we were not exiting into the airport, but into the open air outside. I somehow found Maeve in the sea of people, and she was crying. Oh lord. We then had to get on this standing bus which would take us to the airport gate and customs. The bus was literally packet like sardines and I remember thinking: just go with it. It was about 7:30pm local time and the sky was dark but red. We got into the airport and stood in line to get our entry stamps. Maeve was having a mental breakdown at this point, saying “I shouldn’t have got on the plane! I didn’t even want to come here! It was all my uncles’ idea! I hate this major!” I tried to calm her down, saying “we aren’t even at the school yet, take it easy”. Lol that probably didn’t help her cause. 😂
After getting through the line, we had to find someone named Robbie who was there to pick us up to take us to the school. It took a long time to find him. He was a student from somewhere in Africa (sorry I can’t remember where, and it has nothing to do with me being American, I seriously just forgot which country!). When we did, he welcomed us and led us outside to a black car. The driver packed our luggage into the trunk and we hopped in. I could taste dirt and realized that is was the air and all its pollutants. Lovely. We rode along the highway and I could not believe I was in China. I just looked at all the scenes out the window, and felt as if I were dreaming.