Loonnnggg flight = lonngggg post

Wed June 9^{th /} Thursday june 10^th –arrive in Beijing

It's not like I wasn't looking forward to going to China, but I was so not ready to leave home. Everybody just got home and I had to leave two days later. I wish I could have just stayed home all summer and bummed around, hung out and played basketball but I know that people would have been buisy later through the summer and not there. But still I wish I had at least another week.

I went to bed around 4 am, knowing full well that I had to get up around 7 to leave for the airport at 730 am for a 930 flight. I woke up and felt like complete shit, zonked out on the flight to Detroit (actually this is a lie. I got really lucky and woke up JUST as they were doing snacks and so I got a biscoff cookie! Ahh I love delta. It was a package of two huge biscoff cookies. I was planning on asking for another one when I got off but then I was like ehh w/e ill get one on the next flight….NOT. they didn't have any on either of the two flights =( )…anyways I felt like I just slept poorly the night before at the Detroit airport. I had a 4 hour layover so I spent the first hour walking the length of the terminal, which was actually like a 20 min walk one way. (like 40 gates one way).

I got back to my gate like 3 hours before the flight and waited in line to try and change my seat for the flight to Narita, only to hear after standing for 40 min that they weren't changing seats. Then two min after, Dad calls me and says, anna I changed your seat to the front row for nartia and to the emergency row for nartia to beijing. Hahaha at first I was kind of annoyed b/c I had wanted my own tv on the plane instead of watching the big screen, but once I got on the plane, I was really glad later b/c it was a crappy ass old plane with a drop down screen and projection thing that didn't have your personal tv in the head rest. AND the leg room in the other seats were TINY. Not that the leg room for my seat was as big as I had imagined it would be for the first row, but it was way better than the other rows. Thanks dad!

 

The flight to narita to beijng was horrible because of the lack of tv. I didn't watch any tv b/c I was sitting so close and b/c the movies they showed on their fuzzy screen were also HORRIBLE. Dear john? Really?? Tooth fairy? Ommggg. I don't even know what the others were. I thnik the best thing they showed was BBC's nature documentary which was interesting because of the horrible ugliness of the fish haha. I spent the majority of the flight napping for 20-30 min before my neck jerked and I'd wake up, try to read an SI story that I had torn out and then pass out. It was really hard sleeping on the plane b/c I had to be super conseientious of my SI joint/posture when I selpt. I feel like that wasn't possible but I put a pillow behind my back to help as much as possible. About halfway through my ride, I finally realized that I needed to actually get up and walk around, which I did and by the time I got to the back of the plane, I realized that it was a great opportunity to stretch. Haha so I stood in the back of the plane and spent like half hour stretching my quad, hamstring, calves, gluteus medius, hip flexor. I did this at least three times. By the end of it I actually felt pretty good. I somehow managed to not have to pee on the plane during the entire trip. Hahah I needed to chug like 4 liters of water when I got to my uncles/the day after before my pee finally was a normal color again. hmm haven't decided if im gonna do that again on the way back. Concern for my health > Fear of tiny public toilets? We'll find out in 10 weeks.

 

I love how you can talk to random people on your flight and it's not weird and they're usually very willing to talk because there's nothing else to do on the plane (particularly this one) except talk to people and pass time. I met this woman who was coming from visiting home in Alabama for a few weeks and going to japan because her husband worked there so she was actually going back to her home. She was really nice and told me about how she took French in college but now she needed Japanese but still managed b/c there are tons of army bases so as long as you're nearby you can get by w/english. Anyways, she had the MOST ADORABLE son ever. Seriously THE cutest little boy ever. His face reminded me of the toddler in The Incredibles

 

The other person I remember on the flight to Narita was John, this average white guy from Boston who sat next to me. He went to Umass-Amhearst for UG and Grade school and just got his Masters in entomology and was planning on getting his Ph D to become a professor. During the flight he read thru this packet of articles that was like 1.5 inches thick. So impressive, esp since it was like all about ticks…hahah He was planning on spending $500 total on his entire trip to china—including travel, food, lodging. Which sounded ridiculously hard b/c they were gonna be here for 12 days and also go to shanghai, until he told me that he and his two other friends got both their tickets for free because they were visiting a friend who worked in China nad flew back to the US a lot and had tons of frequent flyer miles and got them all free tickets and the ticket to Shanghai was only $40 by train (or maybe it was 40 yuan) and then they were staying w/a friend in beijing and at a hostel for $20 a night in shanghai. (I think it was $). Anyways, me and john stuck together for the trip to Beijing. Once we got off the plane at Narita we went and explored the Narita airport and found the lounge with all the chairs. I had remembered that they were comfy massage ilke chairs, but when we got there, it was horribly disappointing b/c they were not that comfortable. I had planned on napping there but instead we left after a few minutes. Our seats weren't close together on the flight from narita but I met up with him again after and we went through customs and then to baggage claim together, which made it a lot less nerve wracking because I was afraid xiaojiu wouldn't be there when I got there and I would have no way of contacting him.

 

I also talked to the flight attendants. The first one I talked to told me that the crew splits into groups and each gets a 3 hour break during the 13 hour flight. Towards the end of the flight, I was thinking about how much it would suck to make this flight multiple times a year...so I asked the other flight attendant what their schedule was like and he said that he had 19 hours before he had to make the trip back….WTF. I needed like a day to recover from this, so I was like, there HAS to be some incentive to be a flight attendant…right? Like free flights? Nope! It's not like they can pick and be like I want to work the flight from Detroit to narita and then from narita to san Francisco 4 days later because it's on the company time. Apparently back in the day, there used to be like 4 days of layover (like the return flight narita-detroit would be 4 days later), so they would have 4 days to explore the city…well now you have 19 hours to explore the city you're in…what are you waiting for??? BETTER GET STARTED

 

The last person I talked to was on the Narita-Beijing flight before it took off b/c I literally passed out moments after it started moving (I think I was out before it even got off the ground…something about moving vehicles just makes me sleepy…). He was this Chinese kid who went to boarding school in Michigan (I didn't know that Michigan even had boarding schools…), and I don't remember what I even talked to him about, I just remember that he was completely out too when I was awoken by the loud asian flight attendant who was going around with the meal cart. Not only did she wake me up, but she shook the guy next to me pretty roughly to wake him up and ask him if he wanted chicken or pork…he said no, and fell immediately back to sleep and made me realize that I actually wanted to sleep instead of the chicken. Anyways, first significant differences between asian and American airports/airplane service. On the flight from Detroit, manned by Americans, they didn't wake anybody up. They made an announcement and said if you want a meal, please put your tray down. If you were sleeping, you were skipped, but you could go get food from them later. The other difference I noticed was that they are slow as hell and inefficient in America. It took at least several minutes for them to prep the airplane and let us get off from RDU to Detroit (smaller plane too), only a few minutes in narita for the line to start moving, and like seconds for the plane in Beijing. Asians are more efficient. So what's new?

 

Friday June 11     

I adjusted to the time difference in one day. (I got to my uncles house at midnight, went to sleep at 2 am, woke up at 5, forced myself back to sleep, woke up at 630, and only managed another half hour, so I got up had a snack and napped from 8-9, and woke up just in time to watch game 4 of the NBA finals. Life is good haha). Im quite proud haha esp since I slept the entire flight from Narita to Beijing that was 3.5 hours long and was worried that i'd have a messed up sched.