Kate and I arrived in Shenyang on Monday night around 10:30 after a long day of traveling. We left home at 7:45 Sunday morning for Newark airport. Both Kate and I were tired from staying up all night packing and doing last minute things, so we slept most of the drive to Newark. After making our way through the lines in the airport, we bummed around the terminal until it was time to board. We ate our last American meal at a Mexican place. Kate ordered a burrito and I had a quesadilla…both let us down. With the last few minutes we had before boarding, we hurried over to the Starbucks for a last coffee/tea fix.

The plane to Beijing was empty for the most part. We were assigned the third middle row in the last section of seats. Our particular row was filled, but the two rows of middle seats in front of us were completely empty, so we moved up a row so there was room to lie down and make up the sleep we had lost. However, once we were in the air, I was excited find that they had a large variety of movies to view, so I spent a lot of time looking through all my choices before finally deciding that I want to watch Nights in Rodanthe (I’m a huge fan of Nicholas Sparks). After the movie, I took a pretty long nap, and then it was time for some more movies. The highlight of the flight was an ice cream and pizza snack they served about half way through the flight. Our plane landed after about 13 hours and 45 minutes.

Our next flight was supposed to leave Beijing around 8:35pm (7:35am U.S. time), however after being bounced around the airport from one counter to the next, we were told that the flight had been cancelled. Luckily, they were able to get us on another flight that left a half hour later. Our only problem was we were not able to contact the university to tell them about the switch, so we hoped they would just wait at the airport until we arrived. The wait for our next flight seemed to drag on. I was grumpy from lack of sleep, hunger, and need of a shower. After a four hour wait in the airport, we were on our second flight. Both Kate and I slept from take-off to landing. We were happy to see that all of our bags made it to Shenyang with us, and even more excited to see Lake (one of the girls that works in the international office) waiting for us.

It was a relief when we were finally in the van on the way to the university. Once we were at the dorm, we were assigned our room, plopped our suitcases down, stretched out the comforters for the beds, washed up, and collapsed on the bed, only to remember that it’s like sleeping on a board.