......my first attempt at getting myself home from the airport.............fail..........

It's rather strange to already be back in China after my nice, long Christmas break at home. It actually kind of feels like I never left- breaks always go way too fast. I have discovered that the more I take international flights, the less I enjoy them. My first few times were exciting-and slightly terrifying since I'd never been out of the country before. Between the excitement and the adrenaline, the flights seemed to go pretty fast. Now, I kind of know what to expect..........lots of sitting...........and lots of layovers.

This particular trip back seemed to be especially bad in that department. My trip home took me from Kansas City to Denver, and then to L.A. where I got to sit and wait for 11 hours. This would not have been so bad, except I had to collect my bags, check in, and get my boarding pass for my international flights in L.A. So after collecting my 100 lbs. of luggage and carting them through a number of terminals, I reached the Air China desk only to find that they were not open. This shouldn't have been too surprising since the only flight they had that day didn't leave until 12:40 a.m., but I still didn't expect that no one would be there. So, I sat on the cold tile floor for the next 7 hours waiting for the counter to open. Then came the always exciting security ordeal. And then more sitting. At least there were chairs this time.

After my 12 hour flight to Beijing, I got to sit in that airport for another 6 hours before finally getting to Wuhan. At this point I was getting rather nervous because I knew that once I got to Wuhan I had to get a taxi and tell him where to take me to get home. I was all ready to prove to myself that I could do this. I again collected my 100 lbs. of baggage and drug it all out to the taxi line. My bags decided they wanted to fall all over each other and the curb so right away I looked like a completely incompetent foreigner.

I finally got all of my stuff in the taxi and then proceeded to tell the driver where to go. He began asking me questions to which my almost zero Chinese had no answer. Using my awesome context clues skills, I gathered that he was trying to tell me that there were two universities so he needed to know which one I wanted to go to. He said a few areas that I recognized, so I told him it was that one. He continued to try to make polite conversation as we drove along, but I generally had no idea what he was saying. It was really frustrating because he was nice, and I wanted to have a conversation with him, but I had no communication skills.

At one point along the way, I began to feel like we were definitely going in the wrong direction. This was confirmed when he stopped in front of the wrong university. Again, he started explaining something and I think he was trying to teach me the difference between the two so that I would know for next time. I still couldn't understand anything he was saying, and I really just wanted him to keep driving to the next one. We finally got to the right place, and after I paid him lots of money it took me a while to understand that I had to pay for the toll gate that we went through as well. By the time this was all over I was feeling really stupid and sad that I had failed so miserably at getting myself home. But at least he was nice, though I'm sure he was also frustrated and probably would have be happy to never see another foreigner again.

After this joyous end to my vacation, I got to drag my 100 1bs. of bags up four flights of stairs to my apartment. This was a delightful exercise for my heart after sitting on airplanes for 2 days straight. I had to stop at least twice on the way up because I was pretty sure that my heart was going to explode.

Well, my life is nothing if not exciting-here's to hoping my next taxi attempt is more successful:)