Leaving on a Jetplane... Repeatedly

So right now I'm in Shanghai. How did I get here, one might ask? Well, the answer is that I bravely put myself at risk of deep vein thrombosis in order to fly back to the states from Australia and right back to China the next day. Stupid, huh? The problem was that we had booked the tickets to go on tour together as a team way back in January, and I still had no idea what my plans where at that point so I couldn't make alternate arrangements.

Of course, there was also another complication. When we arrived at the airport in Sydney, it turns out that two of the doors on our plane didn't open, so they were kicking off 90 people because of safety precautions (evacuation procedures and so on); of course it made sense to boot off the entirety of our team. The ten girls who had only come for the Australia part of the trip were on a flight to Los Angeles on a different airline at about the same time, so some of our teammates haggled and got about 10 of us onto that flight with them. Everyone who was an emergency case (those who had connecting flights that they would miss, one girl whose grandmother had just died) managed to get on the plane. But then they closed the long runway at the airport because of high wind. That meant we had to take off using the short runway, but taking off on the short runway meant that we couldn't carry an entire tank of gas because that would be too heavy. So we had to stop over in Fiji to refuel, putting us back several hours and bringing the grand total flight time to LA to about 14 hours.

Once we were in LA, all of the girls who were originally on that flight missed their connection to San Francisco because we were 4 hours late. Those of us who had haggled our way onto the plane still made our connection, which was later that afternoon. However, after we'd boarded the plane and sat down, the flight attendants informed us that they didn't know where the pilot was, so we'd have to wait for a bit. That wouldn't have been so bad except for that the power generator wasn't working, and that wouldn't be a problem when we were in the air because the engine would generate power (or so I was told). However, as we were sitting on a runway, it meant that we had to sit there inside a closed airplane in the Los Angeles heat and sun with no air circulation until they figured out where our pilot was. It turns out he was late coming in from another flight, so eventually he landed the other plane and came over to fly ours.

In San Francisco, I spent the night at the house of one of my teammates, Carey. Her family was great and it made for a really nice, relaxing break between all of the travel. The next morning I frantically tried to get all of my stuff into my bags - I didn't do such a great job of packing, but I figure I'll be pretty stationary for most of my time in China so a couple of extra things won't weigh me down too much. The flight from SFO to Tokyo took about 11 hours or so, and then it was another 3 to Shanghai. I realized that I was going to get into Shanghai too late at night to check into my dorm, so I'd have to find a hotel somewhere. I was hoping one of the flights would get delayed so that the airline would have to put me up in a hotel in Tokyo or something, but of course as soon as I wanted something to go wrong everything went perfectly smoothly. On the flight from Tokyo I sat next to a Japanese woman who was working in Shanghai, she was very nice and helped me figure out at least where the university was on my map so I could get a hotel nearby.

When we landed in the airport in Shanghai, I decided to use the restroom. Bad idea. The toilet backed up and spilled all over my pants, and I only just narrowly saved my purse from the same fate. After waiting for a bit at baggage claim with my soggy pants and the new smell I had picked up, I eventually got my backpack. I picked a random hotel from my guidebook in the middle of town, hopped in a cab (my apologies to anyone who uses that cab after me), and did my best to explain to the driver in Chinese where I wanted to go. By 10:30pm I had a room and didn't have to sleep on the streets, by 11:00 my pants and jacket had been whisked away to the hotel laundry service and I had taken the best shower ever. The next day I finally managed to make my way over to the university and check into my dorm room. Mmmm success.

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