We arrived!

We made it to East Asia!!! As I set here typing this I can barely keep my eyes open. It is only 8:50pm local time, however it is currently 7:50am back in the States and that is the time all our bodies are on still. The whole team has never been more excited to go to bed this early, lol. Anyway, before I do, I was asked to write the first blog to inform all those who care to know and recap our first day.

This day can easily be classified as the longest of most our lives cause it has been a few days in one. Please allow me to explain :). It began for me(Chandler Keenan) at about 6pm Monday evening when I arrived at Sterling to meet the team. There was only a few that met there cause some team members live in other states. So, Melissa, Missy, Andy, Michelle, Dustin and myself spent the night weighing our luggage time after time as we added more and more items to each. We brought everything we wanted to and still made our 50lbs limit for each bag, so yay! We pulled out of Sterling around 4am in the pouring rain(notice the time...most sane people are asleep at this time, lol). We arrived at the Wichita airport around 5ish. We were excited as you can be that early in the morning! Anyway, Matt's mom brought some awesome cinnamon rolls and we ate those. Then before we checked in we all got together and Jim lead us in a prayer. It was awesome! After some boarding pass confusion(the airport's fault) we made our way to the plane. We had to run cause of the boarding pass issue we were late and they were holding the plane for us. Ya, it was pretty intense! My flight didn't leave till 7:30am but three of our team member were flying out earlier. By the way, props to the girls, Rachel, Jessica and Amber for going alone(even if Andy and I weren't cool with it!) Oh and Paige too cause I think she caught up with them at San Francisco. You gals did great!

The plane ride was an experience in itself, at least for me, for this was my first time to fly! I was quite nervous because nothing about being 30,000ft in the air makes me comfortable, lol and that feeling didn't get any better when I saw our “plane”. I don't even know if you can call it that, cause I'm pretty sure I played with bigger toys as a child! The seating was 1, isle, then 2. I couldn't even stand up straight. Anyway, the take off was pretty scary and yet great! The landing not so much, lol. There are many times I feel like we were free falling while in the landing process. We landed in Chicago and my first time flying was over and I couldn't be happier to try a bigger plane, which everyone assured me was better...they were right.

Once we landed in Chicago around 9am we had a few hours till we left around 12. We also met up with KC, Luke, Jordan and Brittany there. The Chicago airport was really big and we had to use shuttle buses to get where we needed to be. After grabbing a bite and all of us emailing friends and family and/or updating our facebook for the last time, we began to board our plane. Now this was a plane! It was huge compared to the first and that made me feel just a little safer. It was 2, isle, 5, isle, 2. Take off was pretty intense, we had to be going a couple hundred mph to get a plane that big off the ground. The first few minutes were the worst for there was some bad turbulence, but once were got to our height it was pretty smooth for the most part. Once on the plane the trip consisted of naps, in flight movies, Sirius radio, reading, talking, getting up and walking around and trying to use the worlds smallest bathrooms. It really surprised me with all they had to do. We also tired getting some pictures out the really tiny windows. The flight was about 13 hours. We landed in Beijing around 2:15 on the 25, or the same day we left America. One interesting thing for sure on the trip was the fact that it was never dark. Our path to E.A. followed the Sun so that was strange yet pretty cool. After we landed, we went through customs and it went really smooth. One of the customs ladies even called Andy hot, lol! Oh and if you thought the Chicago airport was big, check out THIS airport. It is a city all by itself.

Once the whole team arrived we left with Peter who drove us about an hour to our host site which is where we will do most out work. I was really excited to see the city and the awesome architecture of the culture but unfortunately my body was not in agreement and I feel asleep shortly after we left. When we arrived, Andy(one of the guys we will be working closely with) showed us our rooms and took us to dinner. We all tried using chopsticks and some were better than others. Me being one of the not so good ones, lol. After we ate we had a short meeting to go over certain details and to get a brief outline of our time here. Then as I mentioned before we were instructed to go to bed at only 8:00pm local time but that was more than okay with us.

As I finish the recalling of today's events, all the guys in my room have long been asleep and I'm not far behind them. I hope this gave you just a small idea of our trip and first day in here in Asia. Take care and we'll see ya all in a few weeks!