content over the past week. Even though I was relatively gung-ho
about regularly posting with updates from my trip, a certain country's
internet censorship had other plans. However, hopefully all has been
squared away by now, and the content should be flowing. It may still
be difficult to upload photos for the time being, though; however,
I'll eventually drop a link to my Picassa account.
Housekeeping aside, I'll give you a guys an abbreviated version on the
very first part of this excursion: the journey. Originally, when I
had booked his flight, I thought that I had been undeservingly lucky
with my flight. I was to leave on May 18 out of Chicago, and a
certain airline was to start offering direct flights from Chicago to
Beijing starting April 26. I have never had anything even close to a
direct flight to Asia before, and as those of you who have flown at
any length before understand, a direct flight is worth its weight in
gold (What? Well you know what I mean.). Unfortunately, all was
indeed too good to be true. Apparently, China had not granted
permission for this airline to land in Beijing, thus I was to be
rerouted first to New York, then to Frankfurt, then to somewhere else
in some distant land, etc, before landing in my destination. Since I
had no desire to spend the rest of my days on an airplane (in coach,
no less) with a little wheeling and dealing, as well as some generous
help from my father, I got an itinerary starting in Chicago, to LA, to
Tokyo, and finally to Beijing. Since my original airline had not
received the grace of Chinese authorities to land in China yet, my
final leg was flown on another partner airline from Japan. The one
thing that I immediately noticed which distinguished these two flights
was how much more pleasant the Asian leg was. Even after some
consideration, the reason remains nebulous to me, but suffice it to
say that I would fly an Asian airline over a domestic one any day.
The flight attendants were downright friendly in Asia, which I find
tends to be the exception rather than the rule stateside. It also
didn't hurt that they are much cuter in Asia (and thinner). I almost
took some pictures, solely for the purpose of thorough documentation
mind you, but I figured that might have been in bad taste.
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