Day 2

1:25am

Yantai

                While I was on the plane I fell asleep. When I woke up I has 8 more hours left of the flight and I got home sick real bad. It hit me all at once. I couldn’t give up. I have to finish this adventure. I listened to some music and calmed myself down. On the plane we had two meals. My first meal was duck. Best plane food I ever had. Second was beef and rice. That hurt my stomach.  I kept dosing off and waking up. Got a decent amount of sleep though. When I landed in Beijing all my homesickness went away and I went into mission mode. To get my bag I had to take a train from my plane to the baggage claim. After that I had to check my bag in at a new Airline.  I had a five hour layover so my boarding pass didn’t even have a gate number. They told me to check the info desk an hour before my flight. Once I got all that out of the way I went to go find the business center so I can get the Wifi code for the airport. And then that’s when I checked my emails, made blog number 2, and chatted with a couple people. After a while I started feeling sick. Not home sick but nausoues sick. I went to go find some sprite. It was covered in Chinese characters but by the bottle color and the sign I knew it was sprite.  The price for a spirte bottle is 2.50 Yuan. The sprite helped my stomach a bit. When it got close to boarding time I felt sick again. When we were on the plane I felt dizzy. I never get sick on planes, I wont start now. I controlled my breathing and tried to sleep. It worked. I woke up with only 20 min left of the hour flight left and I felt better. Maybe I was sick because I was exhausted. I still don’t know.

                When the plane landed in Yantai I was expecting a huge Airport like Beijing. I was wrong. It opened the door and we had to walk down the airplane stairs, out on the run way, and in to the airport to get the bags. Getting my bags was the easiest part. Noone in the airport spoke English. I found out the hard way. It was 12:30am and everyone was leaving getting in cars, taxis, buses. I went to the info desk and asked if there were shuttles to hotels. She just nodded her head like she didnt understand. So I pulled out my hotel paperand showed her. She nodded her head…Crap. So I asked her if there were taxies. She pointed to the outside the window. And that was the only tip I got. So I walked outside with my two bags and my backpack. It was foggy and barely any light. Not just regular fog but san Fransico thick fog. Kinda scary. So I walked towards what looked like a bunch of taxies in a circle in the street. There were policemen standing by there and I was going to ask them how do I get to my hotel. Then some guy came towards me speaking in Manderin. I told him I speak English. He still followed me. He pointed to the taxies. By that time I made it to the policemen. I showed the policemen and the man who was following me the hotel papers. They just looked at it, looked at me, and said a whole bunch of things in Mandarin. Right when they were reading it more people went over to look at my paper. Now there were about 6 guys trying to read the paper. All of a sudden the airport lights get turned off. I looked back and no one was there. No buses, no taxis, no people except for the 6 guys, the taxi cab and me….”Crap,” I thought. It looked like no one knew where to go. Finally one guy said Laishan District and pointed to the guy who was following me. He motioned me to a taxi. At the moment getting into the last taxi seemed like the best thing to do rather than stay at a dark, stranded, foggy airport.  My bags were so big he had to take the bags that were already in his trunk of the taxi and put it in the back seat. I didn’t think it was that bad because taxis only drive around one person at a time. Well that’s what I thought. He motioned me to the back seat and in the car was a guy up front a girl behind him and four bags in between us including my small luggage in between my legs and my backpack.  The taxi driver began talking to the other two in the cab. It sounded like he was apologizing. I didn’t quiet pay attention I was looking out the window trying to look for my hotel. He started going down weird roads and the fog was so dense it was hard to see the street signs. When I did see the street signs it has Chinese characters all over them and some had little English writings at the bottom. Slowly yet surely my idea of getting in this taxi started to seem like the worst decision I ever made. The driver wasn’t wearing any seat belt, neither were the other two passengers. There were no street lights except for flashing yellow ones and people would just drive right though them.  Well that’s what my taxi driver did. If someone was going he would honk to make them stop when they were almost through the intersection or drive around a huge garbage truck at the last minute. I did not feel safe at all. On top of that the buildings outside were dark. No lights, no cars, no one. Most of the buildings weren’t even finished. Cranes were hanging off the side of buildings and it looked like an abandoned city. Still no sign of my Ramada hotel. I began tying my shoes tight and taking my sunglasses and watch off and putting it in my bag. If I had to fight or to run I was ready. I wouldn’t go down without a fight. Then he stopped by this building and the guy in the front got out along with the taxi driver. The taxi driver opened my door and pointed to the front seat. So I got out and went to the front watching them both. The passenger got his bags paid the driver and left. Now it was just the girl and I. the driver got in and said some things to the girl. Drove a couple blocks and stopped. She got out….”Crap,” I thought. I was the only one left. It was 1:20am. He drove a few blocks, turned left and right, and was going about 100 k/m. I know because I looked. I don’t know how fast it is but it felt pretty fast.  Then the driver pointed at a building with red Chinese characters. I had no idea what that was. Then we turned a corner and I saw Ramada Plaza writing in English. THANK GOD! We got to the front and the cost was 80 yuan. I gave him a 100. Not just because I didn’t have anything smaller, but I was so happy to make it I didn’t care if I tipped him to much. I checked in with the ladies in the front luckily one spoke English. Got my key. Went to my floor. And now I am writing about that little intense situation! Its 2:05am now. I meet my martial art school driver and translator at 10:30am in the front of the hotel. The adventure never ends.

-scott