Beijing...Day 1

We arrived in Beijing after 3 pm…dazed and confused. We though we had a direct flight but apparently you must stop at the Qingdao Liuting International Airport, disembark, take a bus from the runway to go through customs, take a bus back to the same plane, board, and then fly to Beijing Airport. It really would have been nice to know this beforehand. Then there’s the turbulence. I have been on quite a few bumpy flights and this one came in at a very close second to the scary night flight that I took to France during a storm. I thought I was calm until the turbulence stopped and I realized that my knees were nearly drawn up to my chest. Phew.

Two Black women and Chinese American woman traveling together makes for some pretty interesting stories to say the least. In Qingdao we were herded through the airport with no clue what was going on. Michelle and I were the only ones from our flight who were stopped to have our bags x-rayed…and Michelle’s got searched. Hmmmm…I wonder why. A man in the shuttle bus who spoke really good English and worked for a company out of San Francisco wanted to know why Japanese people don’t speak good English after we told him that we were English teachers in Japan. I told him that it was because the culture is different and people are just more reluctant/shy when it comes to speaking freely in general.

I don’t know if any of you have heard anything about the sand storms that China has, but THEY ARE REAL! Once off the plane for good, we got a clear view of the yellow sky…which lead to grit in our eyes and noses. We checked in at the hotel and headed to our room…which was in a completely different building than the check-in counter. It was apartment style and…ok. To describe it to my mom I said, “You wouldn’t stay there.” If you know my mom then you know what the means. It was just aight…clean enough and livable. However, next time I will be choosing a hotel and I will tell the agent (if I go through one) where to make the reservations. Then, we headed down to the restaurant in the hotel for our first meal in China…FABULOUS and CHEAP!!!