LAX – PEK CA 984 and PEK – ULN CA 901.
It’s 6:28 am in Beijing, China where I’m sitting at The Lucky Shamrock Café in this incredible airport – an architectural wonder. I can’t believe that I actually managed to fly out of LAX at all. Trying to wrap up my life in the U.S. and pack for a year in Mongolia wasn’t an easy task. Everything was pretty much in limbo for a few months until I got the final acceptance from the Mongolian Foreign Affairs Office just last Wednesday, a mere 7 days ago. Then I had to wait for my visa to be approved, processed and sent back to me before leaving. So I missed the May 15th arrival date but just by a hair.
I will start by thanking everyone who helped make this adventure a reality. First, CUSO-VSO for having accepted me as a volunteer (with pay) and for being a fantastic organization. They covered medical exams, vaccinations, airfare, training (wonderful training by the way), and future support, I’m sure. Special thanks to my advisor, Sarah Pentlow, and Gesa Harmston, visa and travel coordinator.
Let me not forget those who wrote recommendation letters for me: Michele Ots, my former boss from UNDP Cambodia – and a friend whom I haven’t seen in ages, sadly; Anne Maria Tafoya, a friend and former LA County inmate… I mean co-worker; and Debbie Franklin, a friend and city councilmember in Banning.
Next, my sister, Nancy, and her family for having housed and fed me for a few months. It was good to live in Seattle for a while and to see Nancy’s life. I think I could have been pretty content there had I landed a job. I tried to start doing freelance work but since it was in a city where I’m not known, it would have taken much longer to work out. I’d like to thank Finnegan “The Finnster” for getting me hooked on Sesame Street and for playing all those imaginary games with me. I have to thank Elijah Bear for teaching me some sign language and for all that cuddling. I apologize to Elijah for spending so much time everyday putting him through the paces to stand and walk. I’m no physical therapist. I have to thank Doug for setting up this website and for fixing my computer after Finnegan messed it up. My sister, Nancy, deserves a gold star for providing endless tech support and for loading me down with 27 lbs of Univera nutritional supplement provisions. She was worried that a vegetarian like me would suffer in a meat-centric Mongolia. I am already suffering… from carrying around 27 extra pounds of luggage!
My Madre, Teresa, and stepfather, Mike, deserve thanks for housing me for a few months as well. My mom later provided excellent mail delivery of thinks like checks and my passport. Oh, and she drove an hour to pick up a year’s supply of my preferred allergy meds from Kaiser right before I left. That’ll help.
My brother, Robert, and his girlfriend, Roseanne, deserve thanks for letting me stay with them for about 2 months, up until I left last night. Unfortunately, I am highly allergic to their cigarette smoke, so I couldn’t socialize too much in the living room, preferring the less smoky back room. I hope they understood. I have been suffering so much from allergies, which led to bronchitis, sinusitis and otitis. Not fun.
Terry, for being a fun, adventurous spirit who is always game for an adventure, even on the spur of the moment. He’s the friend who’s been left to deal with terrible tasks such as putting my remaining belongings in storage and looking after my car. Oh, and I’m grateful that he accompanied me to the airport so that I could hand him over my car. Of course, I made him wait around too to see if China Air would allow me to check those big bags too. I was prepared to start sorting through everything, pulling out the unnecessary objects for Terry to cart back to my storage unit. They were 2 kilos under the limit. No need to show everyone at LAX my dirty laundry.
The flight from LAX to Beijing was twelve and a half hours. It’s a great setup. You leave at 1:40 am, sleep a full night, then wake up for breakfast and land in the morning at 5:20 and in China. The interesting part was on the tarmac before exiting the plane. We were told to all sit still to wait for a Chinese agent to board. He was a health officer, wearing gloves and a mask, carrying a Star Trek-like gun. He pointed it at each passenger’s forehead to read their temperature! It was totally freaky. I was too warm and sweating a bit so I was a little nervous when he came around. But we all passed. I told the passenger next to me that I have had terrible allergic reactions lately and have been coughing, so I was really glad I didn’t cough. He confessed that he too has allergies and sneezes a lot, so he was relieved to have controlled himself. What a relief for us both.
Since having taken hard hits with the avian influenza and SARS, the Chinese are very vigilant. Many airport employees are wearing masks. All the immigration agents are wearing them. At the immigration checkpoints, there are heat-sensing cameras to detect people with high temperatures. There are signs everywhere to walk slowly. We even had to fill out a health questionnaire directly related to the swine flu. What cities and countries have you visited in the past 2 weeks? Have you had contact with anyone with influenza? Do you have any of the following symptoms? Coughing, sore throat, sneezing, fever, headache, diarrhea, or vomiting. It says that they will take legal action against anyone who lies on the form. So I truthfully checked the coughing box then made special notes that my doctor cleared me to travel. I managed to stifle a few coughs while walking through immigration and security.
Status update. As I arrived at Gate E01 around 7:08 am to board flight CA 901 to Ulaanbaatar, I was asked to go open one of my suitcases that had been pulled from the mass. Apparently, I had packed a suspicious looking metal object. I knew exactly what it was when I saw the x-ray they showed me. That flask of Canadian maple syrup I purchased in Ottawa specifically for this trip!! Fortunately, the Chinese allowed me to keep it. I was sure it would go confiscated just as my cough syrup was by a masked man in security wearing surgical gloves.
Eight hours later. 3:30 pm Beijing time. I feel like Tom Hanks in “The Terminal” who spends hours pushing around luggage carts and wandering the terminals of his airport. It has been sweltering. I was dripping sweat earlier this morning because the air conditioning was not turned on until about 9 am. Fortunately, I was given back my checked bag that has my clothes and toiletries in it so I was able to give myself a wet wipe bath and change into clean clothes. I felt super dry on the inside and sticky on the outside. Despite having brushed my teeth three times and rinsed my sinuses out twice, I still felt gross. At least I managed to find some reasonably cool spots to sit in at times. The lounge/ hotel area where Air China took us to wait in so stuffy and extremely hot that I can’t stay in there too long. They’ve fed us breakfast and lunch so I’ve gone in for those meals but have had to leave to walk around and cool down.
I did manage to bond with two friendly Mongolians: Bill, a young guy returning from studying in Malaysia for a few years, and Buu, a guy who’s lived in Ireland for five years and is just going home for vacation. We talked about Mongolian food, culture and language. We went through my guide book and they helped me pronounce words from my phrase book too. We talked about foreign films, vampire films, and James Bond films. If you want to know anything about product placement in films, Buu is your guy. He knows what car James Bond drives in every scene of every movie. He can tell you what brand of whiskey people are drinking in American movies. He wonders why actors in old films drank Johnny Walker but in new films they drink Jack Daniels. Or is it vice versa? The three of us have exchanged email addresses and categorized ourselves under the title: Flight CA 901, Terminal 3.
Two hours later. The revised 7 pm departure date was changed to 8 pm. At 5:50 pm now. Argggggghhhhhh!!!!! I just finished my third meal here. I told the others that I hope we aren’t all eating breakfast together tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, Buu thinks that the flight will be scrapped altogether because there are too few passengers.
Arrived. The flight finally took off at 8 pm. Apparently, the wind in Ulaanbaatar is so bad that flights are often postponed until the evening after the wind dies down a bit. There was a lot of turbulence but we arrived at around 11:00 pm Ulaanbaatar time, 15 hours ahead of Los Angeles. I somehow lost Saturday somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I hope to recover that day, maybe when I finish my assignment.
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