Day 1 & 2 - On the way to China... May 30, 2008

I think this is going to be my favourite China picture, so I'm using it for an introduction. I love the smile on this woman's face.

We left our house at around 10 am on Friday morning, it was around 15C and cloudy (May 30, 2008). The flight to New York was leaving at 1pm. Our bags were checked to go through to Beijing, so we didn’t have to futz with them in NY (great!). We happened to meet a friend, Cellie, and her husband who were spending the weekend in NY, they were going to go to a ball game and to see Jerry Seinfeld.

Arrived at NY airport a couple hours later (25C) at terminal 8, took the tram to terminal 1 to catch the 4:30 to Beijing. Arrived 13 or so hours later and suddenly it was Saturday evening and 35C (but Friday morning for us).

We arrived at the spanking new terminal 3 - it was beautiful and the floors looked shiny, just like still water; they were so polished. Michael wanted to rush to get our luggage, so there was no time for pics. But by the time we got to the baggage claim area, alas, my luggage was missing (boohoo); we then spent about an hour reporting and giving numbers for where we were going to be the next night and the night after that.

We took a tram to terminal 2 where we had an hour long flight to Zhengzhou. There were some delays, so when we finally got to our hotel, it was around midnight. I’d slept maybe an hour or so on the plane from New York so I was good and tired for the night’s sleep in Zhengzhou. But...

During the flight a piece of my back left tooth had chipped off; it had started to chaff against my tongue and cheek (owee), so when I got to the hotel in Zhengzhou I immediately opened up the nail file package and used the finer harder white side to sand down the roughness of my tooth - ah, that was a relief - but maybe a mistake. Then I carelessly I used some of the tap water to wet my toothbrush for brushing (oops) but after that I remembered to use the bottled water and rinsed with that. In order to get a good night’s sleep and help with the jet lag, I took two melatonin pills; but they were Michael’s and different from the ones I normally take.

people selling herbs at the Shaolin Temple area.