Day 0: Travel Day

Had to wake up at 4 am to drive to the airport for my 6:30 am flight so after much thought, I decided to just stay awake the entire night grinding in Vesperia. It worked out pretty well and I was pretty exhausted and ready to just sleep the entire flight away. Unfortunately, my plans did not come to fruition.

The first part of the flight was from Houston to Newark, then after a plane change in Newark, directly to Beijing. I slept about 4 hours on the plane to Newark but was stil pretty tired for the next leg. The plane to China was a 777 and as such, every seat had individual entertainment modules complete with a lot of the latest movies, music, and sitcoms. While boarding, I noticed a hoard of kids sitting pretty close to where I was and was a bit concerned about the noise level. After talking with a little boy who sat next to me and noticing he had pretty good manners, I thought maybe I would be granted a reprieve.

Right before the plane took off, the trip leader for those kids decided it would be better to switch out the boy for the most annoying girl possible. I began to doubt the future of the US as this girl didn't listen at all, was walking around even as the pilot was telling everyone to be buckled down and constantly made really ignorant remarks about the plane. I think the best one was "Does this plane have gravity?" She also constantly tried to work the entertainment modules even after being told repeatedly that the module was turned off for takeoff. She even tried swiping a credit card (repeatedly) thinking that if she paid, they would turn the module on specifically for her.....After finding out the module wasn't working for her, she demanded to call her mom using the onboard phone, even after being told that it was going to be really really expensive. Her response to this was "It's okay, I have a credit card."

Needless to say, this girl was a chatterbox the entire trip and so I didn't really get that much sleep. Instead, I watched Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Kung Fu Panda, and Iron Man again. Mixed in a bit of DS as well. The flight for the most part was smooth and we got into Beijing airport about 20 minutes after the arrival time. At the baggage claim, I waited about 40 minutes for my bag to show up, but finally learned after all the bags were out that my bag did not make it onto the plane in Newark....After some fun filling out forms in Chinese....Continental said they would deliver the bag as soon as it arrived.

My mom was at the airport to pick me up and after a 45 min or so taxi ride, I arrived at my grandparent's house. I must say, the air quality was a lot better than I remembered it to be as I could actually see portions of the blue sky. The evening was spent with lots of different family members coming by and my being interrogated with many questions about Princess Pineapple. All in all, a pretty eventful day 0.