DON'T PANIC

Does anyone else remember those iconic words from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy? Inscribed on the fictional manual that was supposed to educate all travelers on what they'd encounter as they travel anywhere in the universe. Of the oddities, customs, histories, and how on the cover of this manual was written its very first piece of advice to all travel's DON'T PANIC!

Wait, you don't? 

C'mon! It was a big budget movie just back in 2005? That guy from Harry Potter voiced the robot! What do you mean you don't remember? Well, granted the movie wasn't that good so could easily be forgotten, but it was a TV miniseries, too! 

From England … in 1981… played on PBS … with badly dated special effects …

But it was a book too! A classic! Still no? Nothing?

Radio play?

Alright, alright! So some of you less nerdy members of my family and friends might not have heard of it, but you should go try to check it out! It's really funny. 

Anyways, there are two words printed on that guide for travelers that I think are very important for even us terrestrial roamers. DON’T PANIC. 

Why is this so important? Let me tell you about my flight from Dallas to Haerbin. 

It started with a little bizarre event that was next to forgotten about five minutes after it happened. When checking into my flight’s first leg, from Dallas to Seattle in American Airlines (the rest would be in Hainan Airlines), the check in, uhh, person made a small comment on how the last flight number didn't seem to match up right in the computer, but it'd probably be taken care of once I reach the Hainan check in. Okay, shrug, I was checked in and took off, taking a small nap in between. 

American Airlines is as unpleasant as I remember, with cramped leg room, no window seat, and a reclining chair that makes such liberal use of the word "recline" as to render the word imaginary. That's why, whenever possible, I choose to be unconscious during their flights, preferably by nap but I'd accept blunt force trauma if the flight was long enough and there were no other methods available.

Seattle, in contrast, was pleasant. I saw my brother there and we had a great lunch and caught up with each other and he shook his head disapprovingly at me for educating the Chinese. I saved some cheese cake from desert for the flight, which is often filled with food only mildly more edible than gravel. Even then, if the gravel was sugared, this would be a tough choice. The cheese cake didn't really survive fourteen hours in my backpack, but that's unimportant at the moment. 

Next, I prepare for my twelve hour long flight to Beijing by … well, sitting down. I sat down in the car, I sat down waiting to board, and once on the plane, I sat down a third time and with some finality. Checking baggage went without a hitch and I was on Hainan Airlines.

Never again will I try to take a US based airlines. All patriotic fervor aside, everything was simply better once you left the sinking ship that is the American airline industry. The hostesses nonunion, therefore incredibly polite, my knees were no longer rubbing the pouch in front of me (that magical extra inch that means a great deal) and the food, while winning no accolades from Top Chef, could still defeat the competition of sugared tarmac. Also, I had coconut milk. That was enjoyable. 

It was in between napping and watching movies** that I really had to remember the motto Don't Panic. Usually, the times when there isn't a possible thing you can do to change your course, reality chooses to reassert itself and remind you of what you're really doing. I'm moving across the world, entering a country where all my language skills have rusted to the point of uselessness, to meet a group of people who up until this point have only existed in the realm of text and ideas that is the internet. Well, Mark had been there, so there is that. But at that moment I could only think of how easy it'd be if I step off in the flight at Haerbin and find no one waiting. 

Just me, by myself, with two huge boxes, no language or reading ability, at the farthest possible point on Earth from anyone I know who'd help.

It's a daunting thought. Which is why I told myself DON'T PANIC. There is no point in panicking now. We'll just sit back and alternate between napping, speaking to the person next to me (a kind Chinese woman), and watching either 500 Days of Summer (interesting), MI: Ghost Protocol (good), or 21 Jump Street (didn't finish but really funny in a juvenile way). 

I get off the flight, ready to check in to the leg to Haerbin and, remember how that checking thing was going to be a problem? Yeah. First off, I'm dropped into a foreign airport and I don't even know which counter I should walk to. Almost everything is in (you can probably guess) Chinese. After wandering around a little bit, I just bite the bullet and walk up to a random counter to see what the person would do to assist me. She looked at my tickets a bit, sent me to another counter which thankfully had someone who could speak basic enough English that we could do business.

Wellllllll, that number mix up at American Airline's computer? Turned out that they checked me into the Hainan leg of the trip to Beijing, but not to the number mixed up one from Beijing to Haerbin. So, without confirmation Hainan gave that seat away. 

I had no flight heading out of Beijing. No working phone either, or even if I did, I suddenly realized I had no numbers which to call anyone from the school to get help. 

DON'T PANIC. 

They put me on the Stand By list and told me to come back at 7am tomorrow, an hour before the flight. He also wrote a quick note in Chinese explaining the situation to whoever I'd encounter tomorrow. Yes, that was the other thing. I had an overnight layover I didn't realize because, jumping time zones, I didn't know when was landing or taking off.

Now, I was hoping I could stay in the airport and sleep behind the security gates, as I had done before when some US airlines screwed up on a domestic flight and I was stranded overnight (with them refusing to pay a hotel, mind you). So, I had to find a hotel … in a country I can't communicate in.

DON'T PANIC.

I walk up to the Hotel Information Desk and hope she knows English. Of course she does, this is perhaps the single most international airport of China, which is doing a lot of business with English speaking nations. For a time, it was tense, because my debit card wasn't working.

DO-- you get the drill.

Took about a half hour to fix that, it ultimately worked and I was ready to head to the hotel overnight (one I made sure had internet). 

I had to blindly follow instructions from then on. A van pulled up and the person at the desk told me to go with them with my bags. Was this a taxi driver or a shuttle from the airport? Did I have to pay him? Did I have to tip? I had to not panic and just keep going wherever they indicated. They took me about a five minute drive back to the hotel where I dumbly just followed leads hoping it’d all work as planned. I paid for a room, and tipped* the person who helped me carry my bags.

*Two things. 1) A minor miracle of providence here. A friend of mom's who had returned from China had about 50 RMB left over. She just passed it from mom to mom to me when word travelled where I was going. So, I had a little to buy food at the hotel and tip. 2) It's not customary to tip in China, and can even be insulting to pay someone already being paid to do their job. This guy, though, he knew the English word “Tip” and made sure to ask, so I did pass him a few yuan.

I set up, took a breath, and opened my email. I had a message in my inbox with numbers from the school, several contacts to call in case of emergence because of some worry about my flight status. I learned later that this has been the wettest season for north China in 60 years. Beijing flooded the day I arrived (the diver I ran into later jokingly called it the water city) and Haerbin has been uncharacteristically humid. Really humid. And raining every other day for the first two weeks I was ere.

I wrote down the numbers and sent a return email about my status with the flights. After that, I killed a little time, ate a few snacks, threw away my neglected cheesecake puddle, and went to bed. Next morning, the shuttle took me back to the airport.

As told to, I went to the desk at 7am and they told me to come back at 7:30. Odd, the flight was at 8. That's cutting it a bit close. I watch the airport fill up as the time passes and return a few minutes before 7:30. Hooray! A seat is open. They take my bags and tell me to head through. I walk to the security gate, knowing that the plane will stop boarding at 7:45. I look at the line which I have about 10 minutes to clear.

And the at least 200 people in front of me all waiting to get to the security gate. This can't be right. I can’t have been told to wait until 7:30 and then expected to clear security and get to my gate in under 10 minutes. I see someone passing by me with a shirt that said “Let Me Help You” on the front and back. I get her attention and point to the time of my ticket and the gate. With an urgent look, she gathers me, about 6 other people and heads us through the super ritzy VIP line. I rush through the gate and look at how far I have to go. 

I've got 5 minutes and I've got to run up and down two stories and catch a subway shuttle to the right group of terminals. Each turn has me jumping through doors at the nick of time. The doors just close as I step inside the shuttle. I skip the elevators for the stairs, which I take at a run. I follow the signs (A12-20 and an arrow is the same in any language, apparently) and I hear the speakers call the Final Boarding in English for my flight as I close to the gate. I rush to the counter, she takes my boarding pass, and I rush inside. 

Finally! Deep breath! Only two hours away from Haerbin. I made it. 

The people from the school were there and waiting for me. I'm all set up in my apartment.

**The movie selection was better too, for the record. Anything that saves me from watching Back To The Barnyard out of boredom deserves a mention. A movie in which I spent the majority of the next couple of days discussing the mind-bending notion of why a male cow had udders. No, no, not a bull, a male cow. With udders. There is simply so much to destroy your synapses with that little notion. From: how come they didn't just make it a bull somewhere in the development process? I mean, how many people did this pass? The writer, the editor, any of the writer's trusted beta-readers, the director, the producer, the animation team, not a single one of these people at any point just raised their hand and said "Wait, hold up! Isn't a male cow just a bull? Why are we giving him female anatomy? What possible reason is there to not make him a freak of nature? To more inworld reasoning, like, do bulls exist in the barnyard universe? If they do, what is the protagonist? Is he perhaps a hermaphoditic cow/bull? Maybe he had the XXY chromosone disease? Could he just be a hypermasculine female because of how the food industry  pumps the cows full of hormones? Why on earth does this thing exist? 

Yes, this was an extrordinarily long flight and I had little less to do but contemplate the horrific reality of the movie that is Barnyard.

Next time on the blog! First school days! Trial by fire! Wait a minute, what do you mean there is no time to train me!?

Post Script:
Beleive it or not, but this beat up, dented, scrap heap of a box was once perfectly rectangular. That is, before it was on four different flights. Despite the fact it had twelve arrows, four of which brightly colored, pointing the proper orientation, I don't think I once saw the right side up.