I finally made it to Beijing! And by finally, I mean finally. It took three days to get here…

Short story: my flight out of Miami was delayed five hours due to the horrible Miami afternoon storms. This caused us (Heather B., Stephanie and I) to miss our connecting flight in Chicago with the rest of the Beijing group. We had to reschedule our flight. But our rescheduled flight was also delayed due to weather. If you want to skip the long story of why I was delayed in getting to Beijing, look for the paragraph that begins with asterisks.

Long story: While in line at the rebooking center, we met this quiet and socially uncomfortable girl named Nicole. She will be graduating from FSU at the end of summer and is studying abroad also in Beijing for her last few credits. We made short conversation and informally decided to stick together because we were all in the same boat. However, Heather, Stephanie and I all knew that we were the primary concern. I managed to get some information from the booking lady, who didn’t help much, and we trekked to the new terminal where our flight to Chicago was moved. It was from D to E in the Miami airport if anyone is familiar. It is definitely a trek.

We board the plane and have accepted the fact that we’ll be arriving in Beijing a day later than everyone else. My dad is amazing and he had a hotel booked for us by the time we landed. The issue now was that we had to ditch the FSU girl. She overheard the conversation with Heather and Stephanie about the hotel. She’s a stranger and we didn’t want to share a room with her. Once we landed in Chicago, the three of us ran to the rebooking center in the hops of ditching her. It didn’t work. Nicole caught up to us there and was waiting to book her flight so she could see what we did. We decided to book the same flight on the next day instead of having another connection through Tokyo. It was cool, but not our thing. The other girl loves layovers (as she said many times before) and thankfully she selected that flight.

So socially stuck where we began, Heather, Steph and I group texted about what to do as the four of us made our way to baggage claim. Heather and Steph waited at the belt to see if our luggage came out there while the other girl and I went to a counter to check if the bags would even be released. They weren’t but we were able to successfully retrieve our bags. Nicole finished talking to the agent before I did and she just left. We have no idea where she went but we were able to separate from her. Yay!

We went to the hotel, slept, ate wonderful Hampton Inn waffles for breakfast, and went to the airport to check in/pick seats/drop off our bags. On the way there, we noticed there was a 30% chance of thunderstorms. If this were Florida, it’s a guarantee it’s going to storm. However, the woman checking us in said, “It’s Chicago. It’s very unlikely.” The three of us felt relieved and went to the hotel to hang for three hours and work on lesson plans before the flight.

When it was time, we went back to the airport and slowly our flight was pushed back again! There was a National Weather Service text sent out warning us of flash floods in the area due to the torrential down pouring and storming. The sky was black and was lit up with lightning strikes. After changing departure times multiple times, our flight was eventually pushed back to 8:30 a.m. the following day. Not okay.

Reasons circulated about this and it was due to either or both of these factors: crew legality or the Beijing airport not accepting our flight because we would be arriving close to 2 a.m. their time. We were all in line about to board. Half in tears, I called my parents to break the news. Dad rescued us again and booked us at another hotel, and we all tried to grasp the fact we would now be arriving to Beijing two days late.

The following day arrived; we boarded the plane successfully and took off! Heather and I befriended the people sitting next to us and they gave us ideas and shops to visit in Beijing.

***We landed in Beijing around 11:30 a.m. A driver picked us up to go to the hotel where we met Jason, our program director, who gave us a brief tour of Tiananmen Square and after we went to the Lama Temple (not to be confused with a temple for llamas). The temple was the former residence of Emperor Yongzheng. It was the center of the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism from 1736-1795, and at its peak, it was home to 1,500 lamas. The Lama Temple is known for its 75.5 ft. Buddha carved from one piece of sandalwood. The picture below isn’t of the big Buddha, but of another within the temple. I’m not photographically skilled enough to fit that Buddha in one frame. And we also weren’t supposed to take photos…oops.

After visiting the temple, we went to the Lake District and sat at a table around a lake. It was a nice break from all the walking and traveling. But Heather, Stephanie and I began to go delirious from the exhaustion and headed back. We grabbed dinner from some place in a nearby mall and went to the hotel to pass out. While we were wandering, the rest of the group was visiting the Hyundai factory and Master Kong noodles. Unfortunately, we missed out, but I’m happy to be in Beijing!