Holy Shit What A Day!!

Well we have officialy arrived in Beijing, after leaving on Sunday at noon. What a long journey to get here though. Our first leg of the journey started as I said in the previous blog entry in Modesto at the high school by way of Charter Bus to LAX. Well we arrived at LAX without a hitch and the representative with world projects (The organizers) met us there with our travel documents. Everything went smooth and actually very quick for a group of 38 all checking in at the same time. We only had one student have difficulties with the security check point and his luggage. We all thought that since he is one of the "Brainiac" kids that he may have brought a sience project with him in his suitcase, but it was only an issue with his latches/locks. After waiting in LAX for about 4 hours we were finally underway. This next leg was I felt the most difficult one and that was the one where we had to spend just over 16 hours on an airplane crossing the pacific ocean from Los Angeles to Bankok Thialand. There was no real comfortable place to sleep as the "Economy" class section has seats that only recline, and I use this term loosely, to a 36 degree angle. In other words they lean back they don't recline!!! We were on the plane what only seemed like ten minutes and they started the routine of passing out hot towels, beverages, and then feeding us. The first meal was served at about midnight, the second series of hot towels, beverages and food was at about 3:00am. Yes they work evryone up to feed us. then as you might have guessed it was about four hours later then they did it again. The food was actually not too bad and proves a good point about as human beings being condition to eat just about anything. We landed in Bankok at about 5:30am Bankok time, I have no idea whst time that is back home. All I know is that any way you slice it or dice it it was over sixteen hours (That's where the "Holy Shit" part comes in). We had about a six hour lay over in thailand airport where we learned about the Thia conversion and recieve some of the currency as change. With the lay over out of the way we were onto the next leg of our long journey. This consisted of a 4 and a half hour flight from Bankok to Beijing, them retrieving our luggage instruments and meeting with our guide John. We then had an hour and a half bus ride to the hotel in Grand Epoch City in Tianjin. We had fifty five minutes to shower and meet downstairs for a welcome dinner of local cuisine. Let's just say this isn't the "Chinese Food" that people from the states are used to. After dinner we had a quick meeting then we were released by Dan to settle in. If anyone is trying to get in touch with thier kids and can't, leave a comment to any of the posts at any time and I will get the message to them. Well I am wiped out so I will do more including pictures tomorrow.