The Flight

These are some pictures from the airport and our arrival. The picture of Clare and I is quite nice and was taken as Dave and I were hearded through the extra secrutiy beacons at Heathrow- in the background you can clearly see Dad looking particurlarly uninterested and mum trying to work out how to use her camera! as usual!

When we said goodbye to family and Clare, we made our way through to departures and had a few beers to steady our nerves and prepare us for the journey ahead. Think we managed about 4 in total. We then bummed about the airport waiting to board, wasting time by buying magazines and books tthat we hope will keep us occupied in the long period of time ahead.

The flights were pretty uneventful. My favourite moment came on the flight to France, when Dave asked the hostess for a Lager 5 times and she failed to understand until he just had to say (rather loudly) "A BEER". At this juncture I made the comment that if he got on this well if a French Air Hostess who is fluent in English imgaine the joy that faces us in the months ahead!

When we got to Paris we spent some time in the shops, but they were pretty useless and tried to spot who else would be joining us in China, as we knew of at least 1 other person that was on our flight and on the same scheme- it turns out that he missed the flight however- retard!

The flight from Paris to Beijing was 9 hours long. When we got on we made a mental list of people we didnt want to sit next to, think everyone does that when they board a plane- i'm probably pretty high up on most other peoples!- and to our pleasure we hadn't been sat by any of them. However, we then saw the huge fatty that we notice waiting in the line, who stank of BO. He looked straight towards us and marched over, we buried our heads in agony, but Dave's delight he turned in one row early and sat right in front of me, and proceeded to lower his chair all the way back- basically on to my lap. The boy who eventually sat next to us was chinese, and our fluent language skills being what they are, we said nothing to him.

After take off we headed to the back of the plane and found some empty rows and managed to spread out 3 seats each, so sleeping was much much easier. THe food on the plane was surprisingly good, and the entertainment was a choice of films- i watched "inside man", "RV" and "iceage 2". All were quite good- "inside man" particulalrly so.

We landed in Beijing at about 10am. We headed to Baggage Collection and after about 30 minutes realised we were waiting at the wrong carosell- start as we mean to go on. Once we got those we headed to meet our taxi. The American's, our fellow teachers, had been waiting since 5am and, seeing as it was now nearly 1130am, were ready to go. So we were ushered straight out of the airport and into the cab. This meant that we didnt get to change any money and were left broke for the first 4 days of our trip! Great!

Due to the terroist nonsense at home Dave and I had been quite restricted on what we could bring. Only 20kg, and a very small hand luggage allowance that was basically laptop and nothing else. Imagine our envy when all the americans- Brock, Becky and Meredith- had 2 bags each, each one weighing more than our two put together and 2 bits of carry on luggage. Becky has 7 pairs of shoes to my one! Brock couldnt believe that we only had one luggage trolley between the two of us. The taxi was so loaded when we got their I think its a good job we didnt take more.

The taxi ride was exciting. Of course the usual ice breaker conversations were had- but we were all so lagged that I'm sure that anything interesting was just instantly forgotten anyway. The taxi driver appeared to be a maniac- we now know he was just normal- and loved overtaking on the wrong side of the road with traffic approaching. I managed to fall asleep but not for long as the windows started leaking and water poured all over my shoulder.

We were knackered when we eventually arrived- via a rather good road side restuarant- and were greated by the grim sight of our street in the pouring rain. Whilst we are all pretty keen on it now, at the time Dave and I both thought we had pitched up in down town Beirut and were in for a less than enjoyable 6 months.