The Trip

I've been up since 2:30 this morning – which isn't too bad considering.

Yesterday, Caroline and I arrived in Changchun after a pretty serious few days of travelling.  We left Anchorage at 2 am on Friday morning and flew down to Portland.  From there we made the 12 hour haul to Tokyo, grabbed some ramen, and flew another 4 hours to Beijing.  There we caught a car to the Best Western Grandsky to grab some sleep before another morning flight.  At the airport, I had been asking everyone about getting a lift to the Best Western "Grandsky" and no one had a clue what I was talking about.  When we got there, I discovered why.  It was "Grand Sky."  This sort of thing happens a lot over here.

It was my desperate need to check the score of the South Carolina football game that made me realize I had forgotten the voltage converter in the car that had brought us to the hotel.  I had forgotten it and the bag it was housed in.  A bag that also included my two tablet computers, and other sundry valuables.  If you know me, you know that this elicited in me a bout of pre-emptive self-flagellation designed primarily to convince C that she did not need to pile on.  In fact – she was her typical collected self, and sent me downstairs to make a complete mess of trying to explain the situation to a desk clerk whose English was sufficient only to handle the checking in of Americans with even worse foreign language skills.

After some back and forth, I had my bag back by midnight and so attempted to sleep despite my body's insistence that it was 8 am and time to get rolling.  There was also the matter of the Gamecocks playing at that exact time.  I knew that if I started watching, I would have to watch until completion, and I had not slept more than an hour in the preceding 50 hours.  I managed a fitful four hours sleep, dreaming that Arkansas had summoned the wherewithal to ruin our season. 

They did not.

We caught the shuttle to PEK and finally saw the wonder that is the main terminal there.  Pics do not do it justice.  An absolute marvel. 

A short two hours later, we were on the ground in Changchun.  My driver and translator were there to meet us.  We had made the mistake of having ramen for breakfast at PEK because . . . I mean . . . ramen right?  But our new friends insisted on lunch at a hot pot restaurant.  Despite insisting that we wanted something light, it was an epic meal.  Epic. 

By 2 pm we were settled into our dorm room on the campus of Northeast Normal University.  The room is incredibly large but spartan in predictable ways.  We were warned about the beds in China, but we were still a little shocked by how hard ours was.  Luckily, the wardrobe contained both a mattress topper and a luxurious fleece blanket.  I was asleep within minutes.

I am not a napper.  I wake up catatonic most times.  And I did.  But we were to meet our main contact while here, Teng Jianzhou.  Despite it being only three hours after our epic lunch and our insistence that we were still quite full, we found ourselves in a private room on the main drag near campus.  My god.  This spread.  Chestnut chicken.  Chinese-style gyoza.  Braised cabbage and cellophane noodles.  Eggplant with peppers.  A local longbean dish.  Glistening fried pork.  And the oddest warm corn soup(?) but served as a beverage. 

An embarrassment of riches - especially for two people whose chief complaint about their adopted home in Anchorage is the striking dearth of decent Chinese food.

This was last night. After an aborted attempt to squeeze a mobile SIM card into my jailbroken iphone, I passed out at 7pm.  Up at 2:30 and now ready for my first day on campus. 

My sports jacket is wrinkled to the point of comedy.  I hope they don't take it personally.