Ah I finally made it home! What a crazy three days it has been! After spending my last day in Beijing with Onur, I stayed up that night to pack. I checked out of my room at 2:30 AM on Saturday, August 2nd. I was surprised to receive a letter from my brother at basic training at the Air Force Academy when I checked out! Reading his letter just made my day, and I wanted to call my parents right then and tell them about the letter. Then I realized that I would be seeing them at the airport in a days' time, haha :)
Everybody checked out of the dorms successfully, and we got to the airport and checked in without any problems. I even managed to get myself an aisle seat for our 14 hour flight to the US. Our flight plan was from Beijing to Hong Kong to Los Angeles to Atlanta. It would take 26 hours to complete with 22 hours being actual flight time. However, after boarding the plane in Beijing, we ended up sitting on the plane at the gate for three and a half hours! Apparently, there was limited air space in Beijing at the time, so they couldn't get our flight out. Because of our three hour delay, we missed our flight in Hong Kong to the US.
Originally, Cathay Pacific told us that we would have to spend the night in Hong Kong and catch the same time flight the next day. In the end, Cathay Pacific was very accommodating, and they managed to get all 20 of us onto another flight to the US that day. Unfortunately, my seat was not as awesome as it was if we had made our original flight. Since they squeezed us onto this new flight, I ended up with a middle seat in the very last row. Of course, since it's the last row, the seats are up against the wall, so they did not recline. Hooray. I even ended up getting sick on the flight to the US. It was crazy to me how my immune system had been such a champion while I was abroad, and now I was finally on my way home and it decided to get upset. I was not sick at all my entire time abroad, except for a small cold on the train to Shanghai. I hardly used any of my medicine, and I did not have "China Cough" or suffer from "Beijing Lung" like the majority of my classmates. Nevertheless, I decided to get a sore throat and a fever on the way home. Goodie.
I ended up sitting next to a pretty neat guy. He was a 23-year-old Korean, and he was going to the United States for the first time! He will be studying English at UCLA for five months. He asked me lots of questions about the US, and I told him he had to go to Yosemite National Park and Disneyland while he was in California. He also told me about how he met his girlfriend in the Philippines a month ago, and we ended up flipping through all of the hundreds of pictures on his digital camera from the Philippines. What a gorgeous place! When our flight was about to land in LA, he got so excited! He also told me that I was his first American friend :)
By the time we landed in LA and made it through customs, we had obviously missed our flight to Atlanta. The two red-eye flights to Atlanta were both oversold, so instead of flying standby, Delta put us on a flight for the next day, and Cathay Pacific handled our hotel accommodations for the night. At this point, we had been traveling for 24 hours, and I had been awake (or sleeping intermittently) for 44 hours (since I saw Onur in Beijing). haha no wonder I was getting sick.
So we spent the night in LA, and we finally arrived in Atlanta at 10 PM on Sunday the 3rd, exactly 24 hours later than planned. At this point, it was 10 AM on Monday the 4th in China, and we left China at 4 AM on Saturday the 2nd, which means that it took us 65 hours to get from Beijing to Atlanta. Whew!
Being home has been interesting so far. I love looking in my backyard and seeing tall green trees, green grass, and bright blue sky. I definitely do not miss the grays and browns of Beijing.
One of the first things I did in the US was speak to someone in Spanish in LA. HAHA and I actually understood him. It was funny to me that I was back in the US but I was still speaking foreign languages.
When we were leaving customs, I had to speak to an airport attendant about our delayed flight, and I started racking my brain for how I could explain the situation to her when I realized that she spoke English! haha I was so excited! At the hotel, a woman said "Good morning" to me, and I was so excited I must've scared her with my overly happy "Good morning!" reply. I was so happy someone was speaking to me and I knew what they were saying!
Interestingly, when I first arrived in the states, I was still speaking Chinese, even though I only know a few words! When I convinced myself that people understood English, I found myself speaking English, but thinking in Chinese! Weird. I think I'm still hooked on my few words of Chinese because it was the only way I could express myself for so long. Crazy!
When we were taking a shuttle to the hotel, I was surprised when I heard the radio in English, and when me and my classmates were rambling on to each other, I had to keep reminding myself that the shuttle driver could actually understand what we were saying. We were no longer riding in taxis with drivers that didn't know English.
I am still in awe that I can drink out of the sink faucet and not get sick. I was in my hotel room, and I was thirsty, and I panicked because my bottle of water was empty, and then I realized I could just fill it up in the bathroom sink. I was so pumped! I was even more excited to see water fountains!! Those are nonexistent in China!
I more fully understand the value of the dollar. I still find myself converting everything to rumbles (Chinese yuan). I bought a chai tea at the airport in LA, and it was five US dollars. That's 30 rumbles!! I could get five lunches at the dining hall with 30 rumbles! Now, 20 USD's seems like SO MUCH MONEY. I used to think that $20 was nothing, but that's 120 rumbles, which is a lot! Goodness I do not want to spend any money anymore.
As soon as I got home, I jumped on my bed! it's big and fluffy and has a soft comforter! In China, I slept on a wooden board, an inch thick sleeping pad, and a thin blanket. There are also no couches in China. There is pretty much nothing soft to sit on in China.
I was super excited when the public bathrooms in the airport had all toilets, supplied toilet paper, and had soap and paper towels. It's the little things in life that are making me happy right now. Not having to fish my own toilet paper out of my purse was a big plus of the day.
I had cereal and milk this morning for the first time in three months :)
I have surprised myself by how much I remember about home, and how much I do not remember. I saw my cellphone for the first time in three months. When I turned it on, it seemed like I hadn't even been without it. I still knew which buttons to press and how to set the alarm on it. I was excited. I also went out to the store today, and I remembered exactly how to drive and how to back out of our driveway. I have to admit I was a little worried that my driving skills were going to be rusty, but they weren't :) I forgot to bring my driver's license and cell phone with me though. Oops. Those were definitely two things that I didn't use in China.
I was also caught by surprise when we got to LA because at dinner I reminded that we had to add tax to the prices on the menu and that we had to tip our waiter. I was also kindly reminded by my classmates that I was not 21... . I miss China for these reasons. Other than that, I am glad I am home. I especially like walking into the kitchen and eating whatever food I like, instead of having to ride my bike to the nearest dining hall. I also like turning on the radio and the TV and hearing English :)
Oh and ordering water at a restaurant in the US is so amazing! It's FREE and they REFILL it!!!! YAY! In China, water at restaurants was more expensive then soda and alcohol. so annoying because all I ever wanted was water. Now I can get water whenever I like. God bless the USA :)
