Someone asked me what I was doing to celebrate the Fourth of July. My answer: "flying to China. " And so it was.
Preparing for this departure was different in that I was so organized that we did not have last minute meltdowns, although it was so blasted hot in Cheeseland the last week, I did have my moments where I thought the weather would win. The biggest challenge, because we will be traveling internally on smaller airlines, trains and cars, was packing small. We packed about 4 kilos of food, water purifiers, hot water kit, extra medicines and heath care needs none the less. We are going to be in places where we have no idea what is available, nor if we can communicate adequately. On the other hand, most of the time, we will be in the academic community, so our needs are all arranged for us....but we plan for contingencies.
Jade House will have caretakers in and out. We locked, barred, cleaned and cleared our way out the door. I just have to trust the gods to protect our place from evil, but there is a new hasp lock on the car port just in case. I see a day where we actually have a full security system, especially if the plans for a new housing community goes forward across the street. Summer holidays in Cheeseland is when the burglars strike.
Saturday morning Himself took the last load to the dump and fetched the Boy at the station. Boy was our driver to the airport. We even left early- the Tour de France and the heat affected traffic patterns so we erred on the side of caution. As it would happen nothing awful happened, and we were in the KLM Lounge with hours to kill.
The Schiphol lounge is comfy, quiet, and allows Himself to work uninterrupted, Also has decent free food.
We chose fancy economy to fly out, which seat had a laarge empty space in front of me, so I could stack my bag with a pillow to stretch my legs. I was happy, alhough 10 hours in an airplane is one long flight.
Our layover was in Hangzhou airport. By this time, the time difference was kicking in. We both were looking forward to a little food and a comfy place to wait for the next leg of the journey. UGH. Let's just say the toilets were clean and the seaing had padding. Not in the top 10 gold class flyer's lounges of the world. Then the plane was delayed an hour.
We finally got in the air, had a miserable meal, and dozed our way to Changchun airport where we found one bag had been fairly squashed (but luckily it just looked bad.) We easily found the student greeters' big sign welcoming Himself to the conference and were loaded into a new smelling car to be ferried to the Sheraton. The driver got a little lost but we finally arrived to be greeted by more student hosts. At this point we were gone from home 24 hours. We really thought we would unpack, have a wash, ( and I was hoping room service in jammies) and a good sleep.
Our good hosts though, had planned a dinner. Starting at that moment. We had not even seen our room!
They gave us 10 minutes. We tore upstairs, tipped the porter, checked the battered suitcase innards, opened the other, rummaged for a clean dress, used the loo. freed my feet from the compression stockings, applied lipstick and flew back downstairs.
Dinner was actually very nice and quite laid back from the usual too much food affair we expereinced in Beijing. No watermelon!! In fact, after we ate, the hostess suggested we go on up so we could gracefully retire while everyone else visited after dinner.
We unpacked, and Himself went off to the pool and sauna while i took a bubblebath and soaked. I was never so glad to see my jammies.
My firt impression of Changchun is billboards. Everywhere. Tree lined boulevards. Big fancy housing development behind fences, and the miles on miles of high rise apartments. In other words, welcome to modern China.
Happy 4th of July.
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