Twelve Hours To Go

In a little more than twelve hours I will be in the plane and in the air that will take me to Chicago. After a nearly two hour flight I will sit in the Chicago airport for three hours. About 2.00 pm Toronto time I will be back in the air for a thirteen hour flight to Beijing. It is still almost unbelievable to me.

What will be almost as unbelievable is waking up for the first time in Beijing and that will be on Thursday morning. My plan is to go from the airport to the hotel and get checked in and a little settled. Then I need to get the stuff that I brought to my host. Then I hope we will wander a little and have some supper. I hope after that I will be able to sleep. We land about 3.45 am Toronto time on Wednesday. Even though my head will think it is morning, I think my body will be glad of a bed by the time I have had supper in Beijing on Wednesday evening. I am taking an alarm clock to get me out of bed on Thursday morning. I think the only way I am going to get over whatever jet lag I experience is by living on Beijing time.

I have had some suggestions about where to shop for some things. My guide book has lots of suggestions for places to visit. I never did write down any sort of schedule or plan. If I keep the pages from the guidebook available on the plane I should be able to do some planning then. At the moment I think I feel too wound up to know exactly what to say or do. Someone suggested maybe I should not sleep tonight so that I do sleep on the plane. However not sleeping is really not an option if I am going to be reasonably alert while going through all the steps necessary at two airports. If I manage to sleep through about half the flight from Chicago to Beijing then I will be awake enough to deal with Customs and Immigration in China and tired enough to sleep several hours after I land.

I will not be able to update this blog on Tuesday night, I won't do that from the airplane even if Internet is available. I don't know if I will be in any shape to write anything Wednesday night. If you follow this blog "officially" you will get notification when I send each update.