The Trip

Okay, so my final night in Canada was unending. I suppose my last sleep in Canada was the the Wednesday night before I left. Thursday night I didn't sleep because I stayed up all night packing and putting things away and still it was not all done by the time I had to just jump in my car and head to the airport.

I was to meet my parents and a friend of mine at the McDonald's in Milton at 6:30am. I left my apartment in Hamilton at about 6:18am in a heavy rain. Needless to say I was late for my rendezvous. My parents have issues going to the airport so my friend Janice took me the rest of the way and my parents drove my car to their house for the year.

The big problem with this situation was the heavy luggage. I was worried that I would be overweight. I was close the maximum for a Canadian traveling on an American Airline flight is 70lbs and I was 67lbs. The American's are only allowed 50lbs. I was very afraid that I was going to have to do some selective culling of items from my suitcase and send them by mail to my parents across province. I have already done some not so selective culling of items while packing simply because my suitcase would not shut.

All is well that ends well. I was just underweight. My luggage went straight to Beijing and easily transfered in Harbin. The painful part was lugging it 5 stories up to my apartment after driving for 3 hours in hard rain on one of the scariest roads I have ever encounted. Aparently my traveling stupor was not the reason for my confusion. I thought we were traveling headon into traffic for some of the flight. In fact this is common not only on highways that do not have medians but on city streets too. It is a bit scary. It seems to work for this people.

Well I landed safely and into the waiting arms of the English First school's Manager, Helen. She was great. She snatched me up before a hastling cabbie could pull me into his cab. Thank God. I could have ended up anywhere.

When I was in Beijing transfering to the plane that would take me to Harbin they slapped a Transfer sticker on my shoulder so that I would be helped quickly. It worked. A guy came and stood beside me, grabbed my luggage, ushered me past the line for checkin and was in the process of taking me to the security check when he asked me for money. Lucky for me and not so lucky for him I had not broght any Chinese yuan with me. I have to lie and say that I didn't have any money. I infact had not cash until Monday evening.

Still dealing with the time change. Between 5:00pm and 9:00pm here it is between 5:00 and 9:00am in Hamilton. My body feels like I stayed up all night and trying to force me to sleep. Yesterday I decided to accept the enevitability and took a nap (for three hours). It worked not too bad. Today (Wednesday) am trying to caffine. It's not working so well.

I will try to take pictures later this week so that I can spice up this here blog of mine.

Show you soon.