Teacher Langley says...: Just changing islands

Listening to: random background music at the Black Drop
Currently drinking: Finally... my favorite drink ever: Level 10 Fireball

This is from last week, but I didn't have time to publish it ^^

Sitting on the island right now, just finished a delicious omelet breakfast with the Captain, now just relaxing, drinking mimosas, and getting a little bit of my blog on. As many of you know, I had my final day in Japan this last Sunday and then flew back home at four in the morning on Monday. Julia and Amanda (well mostly Julia) pulled an all nighter with me and helped me to stay awake for the following 23 hours of travel… yikes.

The departing flight was actually set to leave around 9:20am, but we had to get to the airport about two hours early to get through customs and check baggage and all the other things that accompany international travel. On a side note: I was actually a lot calmer this flight because I was actually flying part of the way home with friends from school instead of making a complete solo trip. Holly was set to travel with me for the first flight, and then we were to split off for our respective country flights. Both of us had chosen Air China for just one reason, the flights were incredibly cheap, and boy did I, at least, figure that out. The flight from Nagoya, Japan to Beijing, China was surprisingly uneventful. Of course, there was a tad bit of turbulence, but in comparison to my flight here, it was like a whole other world of travel. The food wasn't bad either…. just kind of average.

We landed at Beijing airport right on time, and were expected to once again go through security and customs for our longer international flights. Honestly, the impression I got of China was less than fantastic. The air was completely smoggy, I could barely see anything, and everything seemed very closed up. Security was tighter than Kirstie Alley's spandex and employees were about as friendly as a pack of hyenas. The wait for my second flight got extended by about two hours due to "traffic" on the tarmac. My flight was supposed to leave around 3:50 and didn't actually take off until 7 o'clock. But, you know, I was expecting a lot worse. The actual flight itself was, although full of screaming, crying babies, quite nice. We didn't have our own personal televisions like when I flew with ANA, but the plane was huge, and service was… alright. I was fortunate in the fact that I didn't have to sit next to anyone weird or any obnoxious children, just a really quiet teenage kid from Canada. I brought several things to do: movies for my laptop, a nice, thick Japanese magazine to read, sudoku, etc… but mostly I just slept.

I finally arrived in Vancouver around 1:30pm, I was supposed to get in about 11:30 but oh well, got off the airplane and headed down to grab my checked baggage. I had to wait, yet again, a ridiculous amount time. It took about forty minutes for my bag to come out (it actually ended up being the second to last one). Needless to say, I was a little aggravated, but I made it. I got through 23 hours of traveling without any major incident, my bags made it home, and I was mostly in complete health (a little sick from jet lag though). I made my way throughout the greetings door and the first person to meet me there was the Captain. I won't say it was like some romantic comedy greeting, you know, where the girl runs and jumps on the guy and makes out with him while sobbing as he gives her this giant bouquet of flowers, but it was really, REALLY nice.

I'm happy to be home, I already have a little ache in my heart for Japan, but it makes it easier being out on the island. For my friends from NUFS, here are a few pictures of where I've been for the past few days =D