Well it’s hard to recount and summarize everything that has happened in the past two months as I’ve practically recorded nothing of my trip thus far. So my plan for now is to talk about these past two months in bulks as I reflect upon them. I don’t really remember dates for these periods so I’m just gonna skip that.

I’ve flown on many flights before, but it’s certainly a new experience to have to fly by yourself. I arrived at the LAX airport in the late evening after spending a week visiting my sister and other relatives. After checking in at the counter and a ridiculous long wait to have my luggage scanned, I finally arrived at the point of no return.  It’s hard to recall what I felt as I said goodbye to my mother and uncle and rode up that escalator alone. Excitement? Fear? Worry that I no doubt was going to botch something up somewhere and be stuck at the airport? Of course there was also the hope that I wouldn’t get stopped randomly by the Chinese customs just to have them discover 3 John Piper books sitting in my luggage. Definitely would not have been a good start in China. As I reached my terminal gate I decided that I didn’t feel like spending the next hour or so thinking about the possibilities so I started to watch How To Train You Dragon on my laptop . Sadly I wasn’t able to finish the movie before they began boarding passengers so I had to wait until arriving in Beijing to finish it.

Nothing much to really say about my flight. I was practically comatose the entire flight. After finally arriving in Beijing, I picked up my luggage and thankfully made it through customs without any problems. The next task was getting a taxi to the apartment where the guys will be staying when all I had was a printed out e-mail of his address and a phone number that I later found out I couldn’t call because the phone I borrowed from my uncle doesn’t have a Beijing sim card. So like any other foreigner I make my way towards a cab, point at the paper, and say wo yao chu zhe li (I want to go here). That was about all I could do and so it was up to Him to get me there safely. So the taxi driver vaguely knows the area, but he didn’t really know where the apartment complexes were that Steve lived in. We passed by a McDonald’s and I was tempted to just tell him to drop me off there because the e-mail told me of a second option to wait at the McDonald for someone to come find me at 7. Instead we continue to slowly drive down the street looking at the signs until we arrive at building 17 which is where the apartment complexes are. After turning a corner the cab driver decides to stop and ask another cab driver where building 17 is because we didn’t see any building numbers along side the road. The other driver took a look at the address and pointed at the other side of the road where we stopped. Looking to my left I saw a gate with a set of 4 apartment complexes behind it and a plaque that said 17 on the nearest one. Following the address written to me on the e-mail I reach the apartment number, and just as I was about to knock on the door, it opened revealing the person who was heading out to meet me at McDonald because it was 7 when I got there. I decided to rest a bit and finish watching my movie before getting some rest. Unfortunately even though I felt tired from the overall trip, it’s rather hard to sleep after already having 13 hours of it on the plane, no matter how uncomfortable it was. So I laid in my bunk bed until 9:30, before deciding to get up and start my first day in China.