I Can Do Anything.

After traveling for more than a day, it certainly feels that way.
Everything from my hands to my shins (strange, but true) is swollen,
but WE MADE IT! It sort of felt like we were in limbo, not bound by
the confines of space and time. It was eternal, and yet we weren't
really doing anything. We ate, played scrabble, ate, talked about
food, ate, watched a movie, ate, did some crossword puzzles, ate,
watched tv, ate, did a few squats, ate, and attempted to sleep...

Overall the flights had their ups and downs:

Pros:
• I had time to learn how to count from 1-999 in Mandarin, as well as
a couple of other key phrases. (Note: This is not as impressive as it
seems as one need only know how to count from 1-10 and 100 to be able
to do this.)
• Can you say Haagen Dazs? They pulled through on that one. (Definite
highlight.) Actually, the food really wasn't bad in general. My
favorite was probably third dinner, the salmon. (We had dinner one at
home, dinner two on flight one, dinner three on flight two, breakfast
one on flight two, and breakfast two on flight three.)
• They randomly had Hitchcock's Vertigo as a movie selection, which I
was really excited to watch!

Cons:
• My monitor literally stopped working with FIVE MINUTES left in the
movie. I think in-flight entertainment centers have an aversion to me
or are collectively trying to tell me to use my time more
productively, because the same thing happened to me on the way to
Spain. This was at the end of flight one – flight two, the thirteen
hour doozy, was on the same plane in the same seats so I was not about
to have an entertainment-less 13 hours. LUCKILY, I did get to watch
the end of it (two hours later on flight two), and I'm glad I did,
because the last five minutes of that film are pretty key.
• Our seating strategy was a failure (the flight was totally full) and
as a result, I was sitting pretty in the middle seat for nearly an
entire day.
• I asked for water, and they said "water was coming later." I
literally still don't know what that means.

As far as traveling goes though, things definitely could have gone
worse. Going through immigration and customs was surprisingly easy and
quick, so we arrived at the swanky Capital Hotel (pictures to come in
the next couple of days) about 30 minutes ago, earlier than expected.
We're going to shower (so necessary) and go walk around the city!
We're hoping to make it a fairly early night and get into our
rock-hard beds (which Lauren informs me are a staple of China) around
ten or so for a much needed good night's sleep.