Arrival In Beijing June 30, 2005

The only post landing difficulty we had today was waiting forever for our bags to appear on the baggage conveyor belt. When we finally got all our belongings, we walked out into the masses of waiting people, and found my aunts husband. We loaded the luggage into the waiting car, and we left.

The type of driving you see on the streets of Beijing is definitely something to behold. The laws arn’t as strict as the very picky driving rules in the US, so everyone drives with efficiency as the objective. A single word to describe it would be: aggressive. The driving seems crazy, but because of that, everyone is extremely skilled as a driver. When a multilane street had a single lane exit leaving the airport, every car made moves towards the exit, which was a huge mess, but out of the chaos, somehow every car seemed to file into a line without a single bump or scrape. It was a crazy thing to experience.

Also, if you need to get into a lane, you swerve your car into it as soon as an opportunity arises, and you assume the car behind you will stop perfectly in time a few inches behind your bumper, which is almost always the case. If they can’t stop, they’ll swerve to their left and drive by. Theres too much about the driving differences to describe, but even though seat belts arn’t really worn and the driving is insane, I feel safer sitting in the cars here in China than I do in the states.

My aunt ordered dinner for us even though we just wanted to sleep, and we all just ate a few bites. My brother and I got a room with two beds, and we kept the tv on as we tried to fall asleep. I quickly fell asleep while he was still watching, and when I woke up, I assumed it was the next morning. He told me it was still night, and that he hadn’t slept at all yet, but I didn’t believe him. We checked for the time on tv, and when we finally found it it said 11. I was in disbelief that I had only slept for a couple hours, but I couldn’t fall asleep again and my brother couldn’t fall asleep at all. It was torture when we just couldn’t fall asleep, but couldn’t do anything else because of how early it was. We were starving, but breakfast didn’t open until 7:30.