Here's a synopsis of my travels last week, divided into convenient bite-sized pieces. Enjoy!
I'm on the plane to Chongqing right now. It left the Nanjing airport at 9:40 pm, so we met at the Gulou metro station at 7:15 pm and took the metro to Zhonghuamen Station. The airport shuttle wasn't running anymore, so the five of us took a taxi to the airport for 120 kuai. Not bad considering my shuttle ticket was about 25 kuai coming in from the airport before. Josef played dumb by speaking only English and acting like he didnt understand the driver (who started flapping his arms trying to imitate a plane and Josef yelled bird, which the guy responded with a big nodding grin) and tried to get a discount, but the driver wouldn't have it and told him we could come with him or hire two cabs for at least 200 kuai. Oh well.
The fab five: me (do I really need an introduction? Come on!)
Josef Kujanpaa: tall, blonde, half Finnish but all American, speaks Russian and Finnish (and Chinese, of course), came on the study abroad four years ago with my sister Hannah, chill guy who's down for most anything as long as it's fun.
Joel Christensen: less tall and less blonde, his family lived in Beijing for a while but are currently on assignment in Washington, DC. Has a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor that's usually aimed at someone around him, but he's a nice guy on the inside.
Seth Vogel: Joel's cousin, taller with lightish brown hair, studying neuroscience and aiming to be a doctor. Softer on the edges than Joel, but still with a bit of a dry wit, very good at Boggle, one of the more diligent/studious guys in Flagship.
Nicole Galbraith: the only non-flagship student on the excursion, she's from North Carolina and is here with the China Horizons program teaching English for a semester, maybe 5'5" or 5'4" and blonde, friendly and obviously adventurous to come to Sichuan with four guys she doesn't really know.
There you have it! So we got to the airport around 8:15, checked in and got through security within 15 minutes. Not shabby, not shabby at all. At least until Seth, being the last one, tried to get through security. He only had a copy of his passport with him, because his passport is still at the immigration bureau until they give him his temporary residence permit. He checked in fine, but they didn't let him through security. The rest of us stood there dumbfounded for a minute, had a little pity party for Seth and then walked to the gate, our parade rained out.
At the gate, Joel went to buy a Coke only to discover that it was 38 kuai. For a can! When it should have been 2, maybe 3. Can you say ripoff? He ended up getting a bottle of Sprite for 8 kuai instead, and I bought a 10 kuai juice. I brought out Boggle, and after a few rounds we were starting to reconcile ourselves to the loss of Seth, when Seth walked up out of nowhere! He went to another security line, and they let him through, no problem. That's one nice thing about China: spotty/uneven enforcement of rules. There's no way he would have gotten by in the States. They did however tell him that he might not be able to get on the flight coming back from Chongqing...
Josef sat in an aisle seat at the front when he got on the plane because it had more leg room and didn't have anyone sitting there. He loves playing the dumb American! It didn't work, though, because a flight attendant came up and claimed his seat, so Josef got moved to the exit row.
Our flight gets in at 1:10 am - whether we sleep in the airport or at the airport hotel is yet to be determined.
Update: we found benches to sleep on, and it was the best night of airport sleep I've ever had. We're now on the bus to the city center, after everyone else got KFC soft serve ice cream for breakfast. Day 1 and done!
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