Our travel day to China started on Tuesday, September 10th. My team, Fearless Unity, was the first team to go to the airport in Atlanta. We left the hotel at 8:40am, which was the start of our marathon travel days. U Squad got checked in at the airport and through security with no issues, and we all took the opportunity of a few free hours to walk around and get some American food for our last meal stateside. Most everyone got Chick-fil-A (including yours truly). Our flight with Korean Air boarded around 12:30pm, and we took off around 1:25pm for South Korea. Almost 15 hours later, we arrived in South Korea at 5:02pm Korean time (which is 13 hours ahead of the States!) on September 11th. The plane ride was weird, because we were chasing the sun, so it never got dark. The entire flight was in the sunlight. We flew up and over the Arctic and then down to Korea. We even flew right over our city in China on our way there! The ways of the airlines will never cease to confuse me.
After landing in Korea, we had about an hour and a half to get to our next gate for our connecting flight to Beijing. Everyone got through security and to the gate just fine, and we had some time to enjoy the free WiFi. The funniest thing I saw in the Korean airport were the security carts, which play Fur Elise as they zip through the airport. I'm going to try to get some video of them when we go back through that airport on our way to Thailand. We took off around 7:22pm and flew a little under two hours to Beijing. We landed in Beijing at 8:04pm China time (12 hours ahead of the States), and got off the plane in a pretty timely fashion. We went through immigration with no issues, no questions, nothing! Just a ni hao, a glance at our passports and visas, and a stamp. The whole process took our squad of 46 about 10 minutes. Then we got our bags (all of them made it, praise God!) and went to the bathroom before going through customs. We expected a long process in customs, but when the official saw our large group, he asked our squad leader Hailey how many we had, and then just waved us through. No searching of the bags! Our ride to the hostel was waiting for us, and we were able to load the bus pretty quickly. We got to the hostel around 10:30pm and got settled in our rooms. Many of us got online and talked with family. I got to Skype with my mom and my youngest brother Nathaniel for a few minutes!
The next morning, the teams went out together to get breakfast on the streets. Fearless Unity purchased some round pastry things filled with different fillings (we got spinach and garlic, onions and gravy, and apricot jam) and some dragon fruit (which tasted similar to kiwi). After everyone ate, we packed up at 10:15am and hiked to the subway station, which was an adventure. A lot of people spent the hike thinking of what we could drop from our packs to lighten the load! We took the subway (and all got off at the right stop!) and walked a short distance to the train station, arriving at 11:30am. We all got lunch (Fearless Unity got McDonald's) and then boarded the train. Getting all of our packs on the luggage racks of the train was an adventure in and of itself! The Chinese train attendants were extremely helpful though! Our train left around 1:57pm and we traveled over 19 hours to get to our city in China. Our city is only about 600 miles from Beijing, but the train was not very fast, and it stopped a lot. But our squad all chose joy, and we played the Thankful Game a lot! Zach, our other squad leader, said he was impressed by our attitudes. Of course, by that point, we were all delirious with jet lag, so it was easy to be slap happy.
Our train finally arrived in our city at 8:30am September 13th. Our contacts for the month arrived quickly and we rode the city bus to our lodging, arriving at 9:35am. That ended 48 total hours of traveling, not counting the hours we slept in Beijing! We dumped our bags in our rooms (more like little apartments…I'm staying with the girls on my team in one apartment), and went out to lunch at a local place. It was delicious, and everyone navigated our first meal with chopsticks like pros! A lot of people came back to the apartments and crashed. The girls and I slept for 5 hours before waking up! We spent most of the evening of the 13th hearing from our contact about his passion for spreading the Gospel, and then we went to the supermarket across the street to buy some breakfast. So far China has been interesting! I can't wait to share more about our time here!
