On The Wings of a Boeing 777

It was a little exciting getting on the plane. KayLa had a little problem with her carryon luggage, so when the rest of us got on the plane, we wondered where she was. Then when they started final boarding calls, I started getting really nervous. We talked to the stewardess about it, and she went up to talk to the pilot, and they did an announcement over the intercom asking for "KayLa Connolly your flight is about to depart" -- or something thereabouts. She finally rushed onto the plane, and with a sigh of relief on all our parts, the plane took off.

The actual flight from Springfield to Chicago was fun and uneventful.


We never got so high up that we couldn't still make out stuff on the ground, such as rivers and cities. It was interesting flying over the traffic. It looked like an ant hill with so many busy little workers scurrying around, trying not to collide.



The sun was rising the first half of the trip so it was quite beautiful. We continued to rise for quite a long time, drifting through the pink clouds.

Eventually we reached the top of the clouds, about the time that the sunrise was over. The pink cotton candy clouds suddenly turned into snow.

Since I've never flown before, I must have looked like a kid on her first day in a theme park. I was looking everywhere, taking pictures of everything.

The plane was tiny, only three seats across and twelve rows back. Therefore it was a little more turbulent, but I strictly avoided thinking about LOST and therefore didn't have any issues with it.

I think I like flying.

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Once we reached Chicago, we sat down. Then I bought a salad for way too much and ate a third of it. I tried not to think about it too much. Then we found our gate and sat for another 4 hours. We tried to learn Chinese, and some unforunate Chinese girls who were there waiting too got the brunt of us trying to talk to them. In Chinese. In very bad Chinese. Yeah. At one point Beau pulled out his guitar and played some, and the others of us did assorted things to try to avoid boredom such as napping, reading, or video-blogging.

Finally we headed to the plane, though. When I got there, I went to pull out my Ipod (we all had been given one just before the trip to China in order to document the experience by video). After a minute's frantic search, I discovered it was nowhere to be found. They were loading up the last few of the passengers and were getting ready to shut the door. I went and told a flight attendant my problem and she went up and told some more important person. He came back and asked me where I thought I'd left it, and I said in the waiting area. So he said to run back and check, so I did. Lo and behold, there it was lying underneath the seat where I'd been sitting! No one had taken it because I'd been storing it in a sock for safe keeping. And really, who steals a random sock off the floor? So I grabbed it and ran back to the plan where they were waiting for me. They shut the door behind me and were on the way, I with a far lighter heart than five minutes previous.

I was really glad I arranged for us all to sit together. It might have been less pleasant if I was sitting next to a complete stranger. As it was, I could feel free to pull out the meal tray in front of me, flop forward on it, fall asleep, and commence drooling.

After the first three hours, I realized it was a long flight. Another three hours, and I realized that 13 hours is basically the daylight part of a day. 3 more hours and I was used to it. It actually ended up being 14:20 instead of just 13 hours. I think this was probably because we had a strong head wind for most of our trip over asia. I decided that while I enjoyed flying a lot, I don't enjoy flying a long time.

We flew pretty high up, from 36,000 ft. to 38,000 ft. Sometimes we could see cities, and occasionally roads or lakes. Otherwise it all pretty much just looked green. At one point we flew over a large lake, and I took a picture of a barge floating on it (As seen in the picture). Thank goodness for a good zoom!

Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the north pole. It was so bright, I was afraid to point my camera out the window for fear it might ruin it. Which is really sad since I saw Santa Claus, but have no proof. *sigh* No one will ever believe me.

I slept probably 3-4 hours on the flight. That helped a lot with the boredom. It's kind of hard to sleep in a plane though, you tend to get a stiff neck. Or at least you do in coach. You probably get free neck massages in first class...

We had landed at about 4:00 P.M. China time. Once we arrived, we found our tour guide, Alan. He was holding a sign that said "MSU: Emily Klug" I felt special. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

Alan took us to our hotel. It was pretty nice. There were actually three beds in the room KayLa and I shared. They were kind of hard, but oh well

KayLa and I went out almost immediately after we got to the hotel and just walked down the streets nearby. We crossed the traffic for the first time. This was a time of self discovery for me. I never realized I was that fast!

We tried to stay up until 9:00 PM so we could get on a normal China schedule. We made it until 6:00 P.M. and had to go to sleep. I slept through until 7:00 am and felt dandy. I had 0 jet lag. Since that first 13 hour sleep, I have been on China schedule. I think that my schedule at home probably helped with that -- 4:00 AM to noon is already half way to the China schedule!

So that's how we came to be here. Well, actually no. We came to be here through an impulse to go to the other side of the world where no one speaks our language, and a long application process.

This is just how we got here.