Flying through..

Trip Start Nov 20, 2008

Trip End Nov 2009

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Flag of China Beijing, China
Sunday, November 22, 2009

As predicted, the last few weeks did pass in chronological order and it is finally time for me to head home. I will soon post an entry from about my going away party and the amazing people that I left behind in Hanam-si. Right now I'm just sitting in the airport in Beijing looking out at the smog filled city thinking I'll have to make another trip out here and spend some time in China. This morning was absolutely crazy. I set my alarm for 4:20am and woke up just fine. I turned on the TV to keep me awake and it turns out that porn is what is on at 4am in Korea. So, I got up, ate some breakfast because I can't start my day without it, and got my stuff together. I don't know how the time passed, but all of a sudden it was 5am and I had to catch the 5:10 bus. I threw on my coat, may have lost one of my gloves, and pushed my 2 suitcases, duffel bag, and rolling laptop case out the door. I pushed it all down the street (where the sidewalk was missing and it was really hard) and ended up walking in the taxi lane so I wouldn't miss the bus if it drove by. I was just about to the stop when the bus pulled up, the man helped me with my bags, and I collapsed into a seat. Great start!
Once I got to the airport I had to wait for the counter to open at 7am. One of my suitcases was 4kg overweight, which would have been $50, so the lady had me pull a few things out to put into my carry on. Once we got my suitcases settled, I went to go through security. There they weighed my carry on and told me it was too heavy. I had to go back to the ticket counter where they said my bags were gone, but I could just pay for my overweight carry on...$195!!! WHAT? Ok, so its really early in the morning, I'm a little stressed about leaving my friends and getting all of my stuff home...so my threshold for that kind of thing was short. They got a kinda mean supervisor over there to talk to me and he didn't understand. They were finally going to call my luggage back so I could stuff it full and just pay the $50 fee until I realized there was a post office there so I could just send some stuff through post (and not get it for 2 months). Then they told me I also had to cut down to only one carry on, which was a whole new problem. I asked if I could just pay $50 to carry on the overweight bag, instead of all the insanity we were planning up, and they got a real supervisor to talk to me. She saved the day by putting a stamp on my boarding pass saying that I could take through whatever I wanted and the problem was solved!
Later the same supervisor came and told me she was worried I'd have a problem in my connection in China with the bigger bag, so we moved things around and ended up checking my other bag for free. Moral of the story is...1)They're getting way tighter on weight limits, so be careful in packing and 2) making a scene and begging will still get you free things :-)

Anyway, I'm now chatting with Justin while waiting to leave China and make the long flight over some ocean to New York. What a trip!

Beijing hotels

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