the china chronicles 1 -- JFK to PEK

so i felt like typing out my adventures in the LAND OF MY PEOPLE just so i could read it. so here we go.

i left my house with an episode of Garfield the Cartoon half-finished, and i sort of wanted to know what happened in the end except my dad insisted we would miss our plane if we arrived at the airport anything but 4 hours early. okay fine. 4 hours it is, you win and i can't watch Garfield. so we left the house. it's my dad's way or the highway and coincidentally even though my dad got his way we were on the highway headed for JFK anyway.

[actually, first before leaving i took pictures of my marimba from multiple angles and my dad took a video of me playing it. the why will be explained later.]

i have a strange obsession with airports and was kind of excited that it was JFK airport instead of Newark, since JFK is so much prettier and larger. i just love airports. they're so open and clean and orderly and ever since that dumb book in fifth grade called Fly Away Home or something i've wanted to try living in an airport except without the overt symbolism we were expected to search for.

the thing is, i hate airplanes. but airplane was my life for the next 13 hours.

i think for once the plane was tolerable. they played Planet 51 [which was cute but forgettable] and The Lovely Bones [which was creepy and forgettable]. i read ten essays in The Writer's Presence, which was the original summer assignment, then got pissed off and read the whole book through just so i could say i did. THEN i started reading the AP Bio assignment which was more interesting but of course my dad told me to CUT IT OUT AND GO TO SLEEP. his way or the highway, remember, and there were no highways in the sky. or so i thought. that shall be explained later.

so then i fell asleep listening to Explosions in the Sky [which, now that i think about it, is ironic on a plane, okay]. but they're good sleeping music. probably the first time i had managed to go to sleep for more than 3 hours on a plane. ironic name, good music, see?

so we landed at PEK [aka Beijing Capital Airport], Terminal 3 [aka the new terminal] and waved our navy books in the face of the immigration officers. all those chinese nationals with their maroon books and no entry cards, and we had NAVY BOOKS and YELLOW ENTRY CARDS. we got a few side glances but this would become a theme.

my aunt picked us up and we arrived at her apartment. i smelled like airplane and felt like jetlag and overall it was gross until i took a shower. showers are the general cure-all for feeling crappy. afterwards i felt super awesome and i jumped around the apartment while my aunt uncle and cousin watched their weird american relative air-guitaring the part to... i think it was a  Streetlight Manifesto song, actually.

then my dad told me to EXCUSE ME CUT IT OUT AND SLEEP so i shotgunned the bottom bunk of the guest room bunkbed [the top was smaller] and turned the AC on and nearly froze to death because i didn't know 20 degrees Celsius was like 68 degrees Fahrenheit. so i was in china and i didn't know metric.

SUPERCOOL.

JFK-PEK end.