D - Eating our way to China

Home sweet home! Well, sort of. We are back in Dalian China after an epic 29 hour journey. After many days of uncertainty when we would return, we finally picked February 15 as our departure date. To make the trip to China a little more pleasant, I decided to utilize some of our Continental miles to upgrade from Economy to their BusinessFirst class. They had previously denied the use of the miles for reserving a one way flight, so I was amazed when they said we could actually do it.

Despite having never experienced Business or First class on my previous 4 international flights, I was pretty sure what to expect. We'd get big cushy seats that almost lie flat, lots of free drinks, and a half decent meal. The seat is worth its weight in gold. You can adjust almost every aspect from an extendable footrest to lumbar support. If you're like me though, you can't sleep unless you're totally flat. So "lie-flat" (which is really at an angle and not entirely flat) is not flat enough for me. The most interesting thing though was the huge amount of food we got.

Some examples of the food:
Appetizer of pork and lobster
Mesclun Salad
Champagne with lunch
Steak as the main course
Port wine and chocolate for dessert
Second meal of chicken noodle soup (more like chicken noodle stirfry actually)
Third meal of fresh fruit, omelette

Interestingly, I found the food passed the time more than movies or my futile efforts to sleep. The first 6 hours breezed by thanks to the initial meal service. The flight attendants were a little nicer in BusinessFirst but I still wasn't overwhelmed by the service. I guess it's hard for anyone to sound pleasant repeatedly asking "Coffee, Tea, something to drink?" 500 times a flight. Oh and I don't recommend the Oscar nominated film "Babel". I'm a sucker for artsy make-you-think kind of movies but I just didn't get it. It's also over the top depressing, which probably isn't the best choice for people who are trapped inside a small cylindrical shell for 13 hours.

After our cushy 13 hour flight to Beijing, the less pleasant part of the journey began. Primarily it consisted of waiting in lines for everything. It took forever to get through the customs line. We had to wait 5 hours for our connecting flight to Dalian. The plane was packed. Getting out of the baggage claim in Dalian was an exercise in human osmosis. The taxistand was a mad house. But finally we made it back to Dalian Maritime University. Note to self - try not to travel on the verge of Chinese New Year again.

Upon waking up the next morning, we decided to go looking for groceries. Normally we get basic things like water, coke, oatmeal, and snacks at a variety of "little stores" on campus. Being Chinese New Year however, this place is a ghost town. Around every corner I keep expecting to see a creaking saloon fluttering in the breeze and a cow skull half buried in the sand. Fortunately international capitalism came to the rescue in the form of Trustmart (a large Chinese grocery chain, now owned by Walmart). It's not in reasonable walking distance but it's not far on the bus so we were able to get our groceries there.

After a taxi back to the apartment and carrying a couple gallons of water up 5 flights of stairs, we had a lunch of peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Then we promptly took a nap, which lasted from 3PM Saturday to 4AM Sunday morning. And that's why I'm writing this blog entry at 6AM our time. Needless to say we caught up on our sleep, but I am not sure we're adjusted to the time zone just yet. My next mission is to avoid going to bed at 6PM!