Digging a hole through the middle of the earth

When I was younger, Becca and I would go out in the back yard and talk about digging a hole through the earth and climbing through to China. Well, I've gotten to China, and without the aid of a giant hole. The travel over was actually quite pleasant. Becca saved my ass this morning by calling and waking me up at 5:40. Corey drove me to the airport, and barring some computer glitches with United, I boarded my flight a-okay. We had a brief layover in San Francisco, and transferred to the international terminal. Our flight left just before 11 AM, and we landed in Beijing around 11:15 PM, Pacific time (or 2:15 PM Beijing time). It's currently 8:15 PM (5:17AM West Coast time), so I'm close to having been up 24 hours...

OK, so back to the long flight--I loved it! I started off with a brief nap while we were flying northwest, about parallel to the Canadian coastline. By the time we had gotten west of Anchorage, I had watched the movie Doubt, and eaten lunch (braised beef and mashed potatoes--not bad!). Then I started talking to the gentleman next to me, Frank. Frank lives in Texas, but grew up in China. We ended up talking for about 3 hours throughout the flight, and he taught me a lot about China! My favorite part of the flight was flying over the Bering Sea and into NE Siberia (the photo at left)! The Kamchatka Peninsula is very beautiful and awe inspiring. I took a ton of pictures throughout the flight, but will spare you from most of them :) Flying into Beijing was very interesting... It was easy to tell when you crossed into China from Russia-the agriculture layout completely changed. When we were landing, I noticed all of these high-rise buildings and asked Frank about them. Apparently almost everyone lives in apartments, and there are relatively few single family homes.

When we arrived, my adviser (An)'s colleague (Professor Qu) picked us up from the airport. After deplaning, I noticed a UPS ad, Tiger Woods endorsing some financial service, and my favorite Western influence was the "Friends" theme song playing on the radio. We drove to our hotel and checked in, and had an hour to shower and get ready for dinner.

Dinner was fabulous! We had a hot pot of broth with thinly sliced beef, lamb, rice noodles, and vegetables. I really enjoyed the meal.

Tomorrow, we're meeting at the China Earthquake Administration (where Prof. Qu works) at 8:30. The grad student I'll be working with (Liu) will talk me through some of the geology in the Tangshan area, where we will be trenching. After lunch, we drive the hour and a half to Tangshan.

So that's about it for now... I almost thought I was going to get run over by a car tonight! I thought being a pedestrian in NY was scary. Boy, was I mistaken! I would NEVER feel comfortable driving here, or really living here either. Traffic is really scary. (Mom and Dad--do not even contemplate trying to rent a vehicle. Let's stay as far away from streets as possible!)

I think It's just about bedtime. Quite the 24 hour day... I am looking forward to a solid 9 hours of sleep, on an even more solid bed (seriously, it's like sleeping on a sheet of plywood)! Let's hope my accomodations in Tangshan are a little more comfortable.

Thanks for reading all of this! I couldn't resist posting a picture of the fire safety measures in the hotel... :) enjoy!