Greetings from the future

I know you’re all desperately wondering what happened after I passed through security at BWI. Well, I walked to the gate. I sat down. Then I alternated between electronic Yahtzee and staring blankly into space until boarding time.

I didn’t have to wait long, relatively speaking, and the airplane was the cutest thing ever (next to baby animals). And we had to walk outside to board! This flight was very short (40 minutes?); I read through the Continental Airlines magazine and then we were in Newark.

The bags were checked all the way through, so for four hours I never left Terminal C. I didn’t want to sit down, even when my carry-on bags started digging into my shoulders because I figured I’d soon have 16 hours to sit all I wanted, and then some. Instead I:

• Wandered through two different Borders bookstores
• Ate a banana crunch muffin
• Exchanged green bills with old guys’ faces on them for colorful bills with lions
• Bought a plug adaptor
• Knocked down calendars in the Metropolitan Museum of Art store
• Rode the people-movers (but only a couple of times because walking took longer and I did not want to save time)
• Used free samples in Bath and Body Works
• Smelled the coffee in Starbucks, while pretending to be fascinated by their meager selection of mugs
• And basically wandered through every other store in the terminal, except the ones with fancy jewelry, clothes, and luggage.

Then…the moment I’d been dreading. Time to board the airplane for 16 hours of misery. Only, surprisingly, it wasn’t all that bad. I hardly listened to the audio books I spent so much time downloading. Thank goodness I didn’t fill up my backpack with actual books. So what did I do?

• Napped. I took probably 3 thirty-minute naps and then around 11pm Newark time slept for four hours. It seemed to work well, because yesterday I was able to fall asleep at around 11:30 pm Hong Kong time, even though it should have felt like lunch time.

• Watched “What Happens in Las Vegas.” I wouldn’t recommend it, unless you’re stuck on a plane. I also saw “L for Love, L for Lies.” Mostly it confused me, because I missed the first fifteen minutes, the English subtitles were teeny tiny and I couldn’t always tell when the flashbacks were happening. But it involved a conman and interlapping love triangles.

• Worried informally about Deep Vein Thrombosis

• Played Solitaire, Blackjack, Memory, some Pac-Man like thing only with cavemen and mammoths and assorted other games whose most challenging aspect was figuring out the controls.

• Enjoyed the hot hand towels occasionally dropped in my lap

• Ate the following: Twix candy bar, pretzels, shrimp salad (read: some lettuce leaves with a shrimp on top) salmon and rice, a genuine airplane roll, a brownie, a fortune cookie, a chicken sandwich, melting Hagen Daaz ice cream, dried fruit, dim sum and a fruit salad. I saved my almond cookie for later.

• Watched the channel that showed our plane moving across a map. Apparently, we went up past Canada then went across and down through Russia and China.

• Watched an episode of the Cosby Show with a teenage Adam Sandler

• Used the airplane toilet. It’s true, and it didn’t even suck me down.

• And I don’t remember what else I did, but somehow I found myself leaving the plane.

And suddenly I was in the Hong Kong airport. And blonde.

Everything continued running smoothly. A long line through Immigration, then to baggage claim, then out to the arrival level to wait by the 7-Eleven for Lingnan representatives.

The 7-Eleven cashiers wore the best uniforms ever.

We had about an hour to spend, so we played Spoons. The exchange student from Scotland (I forget absolutely everyone’s name) suggested it and I think it’s pretty amazing we all knew the rules. Although I thoroughly approve of such an awesome game achieving international recognition.

Then the Lingnan people came! A few more exchange students were with them, from West Virginia and the Mainland. There were lots of introductions, mingling, etc. because we still had to wait a few minutes for the bus to arrive.

The ride to the University was 40 minutes long, but it went by quickly. By the way, cars are driven English-style, which of course makes perfect sense, but I’d never thought about that before. Anyway, the skyscrapers at night were AMAZING. So I mostly stared out the window, although I also talked a bit with the girls in front of me (again, I forgot all names). But one of them knows Rachel! We tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up.

At Lingnan I was shown to the room in my hostel (on the fourth floor, but there are elevators) and given the key and a bag with bedding. There’s also a code we have to type to enter the building, and another one for using the “Female Lavatory” in the hall. The room seems a bit smaller than the ones at St. Mary’s, but I love it SO much better. The furniture is all made into the wall, so you can’t rearrange anything, but this also means the space is being used more efficiently, because long shelves can be put above the desk and also beneath the window. A HUGE window by the way, with a view of some of the Tuen Mun apartments. Whee! I’m in a city!

As a side note, the mattresses are less than two inches thick and extraordinarily firm. And by extraordinarily firm I mean there’s probably not much difference between it and a floor. I felt apprehensive at first, but when it came time for sleep I discovered I actually enjoyed it. At least as much as the mattresses I’m used to (maybe more?) I just have to remember not to plop down on them.