Safely

27 hours later here we are safely ready to tuck ourselves in for some shut-eye. The day has been long but adventurous. No problems with any of the flights with the exception of my two cohorts who kept contrasting and comparing their previous business class experiences to their first overseas coach experience. Naive, I thought everything was nice. Going into yesterday morning I hadn't had a night I slept more than 3 or 4 hours all week. E and I were both running on about 1 1/2 hours of sleep when we sat down for take-off. I slept about 8 hours on the long flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo and was in and out on the last flight into Hong Kong. I'm sleepy now but feeling pretty good. E on the other hand is trying to get to sleep, not having slept more than 45 minutes or so on any of the flights. I would compare my sleeping experience to that of a post-operative one. I felt like I was going in and out as if coming off anesthesia. Like the nurse would wake me briefly to take something or to have me eat or drink. Similarly I would wake up and the stewardess would be handing me a diet pepsi, meal or snack. Speaking of diet coke/pepsi, I think I had my last one on the flight coming into Hong Kong. They now cost over $3 for a can. As we arrived in Japan earlier we witnessed a beautiful sunset. We had been in daylight for about 21 hours. It was the wierdest feeling looking out the window at 3 am home time and it was still daylight.

Here are some brief observations from the day:

• Asian airports are cleaner, employee serious workers, are well organized, and all workers are clean and neatly put together. The women especially are all dressed exceptionally in their matching airline attire. In my small exposure I am realizing we Americans appear sloppy. :)
• Stewardess' on international flights work their butts off. And they are still very pleasant 14 hours later.
• It seems like two weeks since I saw my babies.
• The airport seats are not designed for big girls and seat belts are not a standard length.
• The "decent" hotels (as Eric calls it) here are nicer than most American hotels. I can't wait to see the nice one in Shenzhen tomorrow.

Sorry. No people pictures tonight. We're a little stale from the long day. I'm sleepy and E is finally snoring so hopefully more tomorrow. In a few short hours we shuttle into mainland China. Goodnight!