It was clear sailing from Indy to Chicago. A two hour lay-over helped me catch up on email. Since I am the only one from Indiana on the trip, I met up with the people from New England, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. We were in the air for about 13 hours and 30 minutes from Chicago to Beijing. We flew within 60 miles of the North Pole! The surface of the earth was white from snow on the ground for 75% of the trip. It was very strange to be looking out the window of the plane and have the direction change from facing west to facing east. I sat next to a young Chinese national who spent 16 months as a visiting professor at Georgia Tech. His American name was Benjamin he missed his mother very much. Although we had some trouble understanding one another, his English was much better than my Mandarin. He cheered when we landed in Beijing. I also spoke with a flight attendant for most of an hour. He had studied Chinese in a high school in Kansa and lived in Xian for a year as a graduate student. Another person I chatted with was a man who was attending a conference in Beijing and visiting his mother. He has lived in the US for 20 years and now resides in Chattanooga, TN. He came to the US to get his PhD and has not left. I spent the other parts of the flight watching TV shows, listening to my ipod, reading magazines, looking out the window of the plane, and getting up to stretch as much as possible. We ate two meals on the plane and had a noodle snack between them. I don’t look forward to the plane ride home.
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