We were up super early on Friday morning. The kids were actually up before us. Josh and I set our alarms for 3:30 am and I planned on waking the kids around 4:00 but when I went up there the big kids were all dressed and Maddie was in the shower. Sawyer was still asleep, thank goodness. We managed to make it out the door by 5:00 am. We got our Suburban parked and all our bags onto the shuttle and then all our bags off the shuttle and into the airport. We checked in fairly quickly, made it through security without incident and then sat around for 1 1/2 hours wondering why the heck they said to be there 3 hours early. We all could have used another hour or two of sleep.
Our first flight of the day was to Vancouver - about a 4 hour flight. Thankfully, Sawyer slept for a good portion of it. The other kids all did really well too. I was worried they'd get airsick but no one said anything if they did. We made it into Vancouver without a problem and had about an hour or so to wait for our next flight after getting to the gate. I had packed lunches for the kids so they ate theirs and Josh and I got some A&W hamburgers and root beer - without ice! Weird.
Then we got on the BIG flight.
We were able to get two whole rows (4 seats each) all to ourselves so there was an extra seat in each row. That was nice to lay Sawyer down in, who fell asleep pretty quickly and slept most of the way. The other boys also took some naps - especially towards the end of the flight. I don't think Maddie ever fell asleep or if she did, it wasn't for long. I was able to catch a very uncomfortable nap of about 2 hours and Josh was able to sleep quite a bit, but not very comfortably. Airlines did not consider the big/tall people when they designed the seats. They fed us two 'meals' but no one ate much. We should have gotten some water for everyone in Vancouver as we were all really thirsty by the end of the flight. The flight attendants came around several times with their big water bottle but if you weren't up and asking for a drink they'd just walk by you. They were unfriendly but I wouldn't say they were friendly either. Very matter-of-fact. The airplane we were on also had a camera near the nose of the plane and they showed video of us taking off and landing. That was a little scary but in a comforting kind of way. The kids thought it was awesome. I think the camera was on the whole time, as the TV channel never switched to something else, but we were cruising at 36,000 ft (is that right?) and there's not much to see up there besides clouds. It was daylight all the way over, which was weird because they turned all the lights down on the plane and everyone had their window shades drawn shut so it seemed like nighttime, and that's what our bodies thought it should be too. We flew from Vancouver up to Alaska and then flew across the tip of Russia and down into China so we were flying over land almost the whole way. There was another TV channel that showed the progress of the flight. It was fun to watch at first but then it would change to a new screen that showed how much longer we had left in the flight and that was just depressing! It was a LONG flight! And an even longer day.
We made it into Beijing and through Customs/Immigration. That was the easy part. Then we had to figure what gate our next flight was on (it wasn't printed on our boarding passes). We had to go through security first before we could find out the gate. Security was total mess. Their were no clear lines like there are in America. There was ONE person checking passports and stamping them and boy, did he stamp them. He took his job seriously. It was pretty funny to watch him. From there you move to the conveyor belt area behind a big wall. It's much like the American ones except that there are like 3 bins and everybody is waiting for their turn with them. The language barrier isn't fun either. I don't expect everyone here to know English - I am fully aware that we are the visitors here. But it's still hard. We made it through security though and made it to our final departure gate of the never-ending day. This time we waited for a bus to come get us. The bus drove us out on the tarmac and then we climbed a big walkway up to the plane. The kids thought this was awesome! We waited for about an hour on the runway before we took off. Almost all of us were asleep before we ever took off. I slept a little here and there but I didn't want both Josh and I to be asleep if one of the kids needed something.
Once we made it to Xi'an at about 11 pm on Saturday evening, we were the last people off of the airplane and ended up being so far behind everyone else we took a wrong turn in the airport. We'd just followed the crowd on our last flight and they led us to where we needed to go. We walked for a quite a while before we finally found someone who looked like they might work there and tried to ask her where to go. She just shook her head and waved at us to go back the way we came. So we trudged back the very long corridor we had just walked down and finally found a sign that told us where to go. By the time we got to the baggage carousel there were no people around and no bags. I seriously had a minor heart attack. Josh (thank heavens for this man) calmed me down and we found the tiny little place where they keep the unclaimed bags. Our guide was waiting for us so we quickly gathered everything and went to meet her. She is so nice and very helpful. Her English is EXCELLENTE. She led us to a big huge van and we loaded up our crew and baggage and headed off to the hotel - about 45 minutes away. She gave us our itinerary and told us quite a few things about Xi'an. This is where she lives with her husband and little boy so she knows quite a bit about it.
We got to the hotel and got all checked in. We got everyone in their jammies and we all crashed. We woke up around 8:00 the next morning (Sunday in China), got showered and dressed and made it downstairs to the breakfast buffet right before it closed. They had quite a few Western breakfast items but mostly Chinese. Up until this point in my life I could have said I've never had fried rice for breakfast but not anymore. It was pretty good too. They have little mini pancakes that the kids have been eating by the ton. They have bacon but it doesn't look like bacon. It looks like beef jerky that's been soaked in oil. Josh and the boys say it tastes like bacon but I don't think I'll be braving that anytime soon.
The hotel is pretty nice. We're staying at the Jian Guo Hotel in Xi'an. You can tell it's an older building but it's been well maintained. The hotel is built around this courtyard/pond.
Here's a view of the outside of it from inside our van as we were heading back one day (the big yellow building):
Our rooms don't smell at all, which is wonderful because smoking is allowed pretty much everywhere here. We have two connecting rooms with two full beds in each and a crib. The beds are pushed together though so it seems like there is just one hugmongous bed in each. The beds are super comfy. The rooms aren't huge but they're nice and they have air conditioning so that's about all we care about here because it is HOT. Like Houston or Dallas hot. It does seem to cool down a little more at night though. The landscape here is similar to Dallas or Houston - very flat. The difference is the amount of huge, high rise apartment buildings here. In America you see high rise buildings in the downtown area but there are usually businesses or offices. Here, there are an insane amount of high rises and they are all apartments. There is also a CRAZY amount of new ones being built. It's mind boggling to think about how many people have to live in a city for them to build this many apartment buildings. Our guide calls them "Big Beauties". They are only allowed on the outside of the city wall. There is a height restriction for the part of the city inside the city wall. More on the city wall in another post.
That's about it for these few days. I'll finish posting about Sunday (our Gotcha Day for G) in the next post. :)
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