I made it!

Wow, China is different than Cambodia. I actually thought if I made it through Cambodia, China would be no problem. I was wrong. It is much harder to adapt to China. I'll start with my last day in Cambodia...

(No pictures yet - I still don't have internet on my laptop)

On the way home from lunch we were talking about where we lived. I said 'I like this neighborhood.' Out of no where this old man appears and says, 'I like YOU. I like YOU'. This was strange for 3 reasons.
1. He was wearing a suit. I don't know if I ever saw another Cambodian dressed up.
2. He was speaking English.
3. He was old. I haven't had a chance to blog about this yet but there aren't a lot of elderly in Phnom Penh. They have had a tragic history and sadly in the 70's nearly the entire population of Phnom Penh was wiped out.

That's about my last memory of Cambodia before heading to the airport. I like it - maybe he appeared out of no where to tell me Cambodia liked me. Does that mean I should return?

I traveled to China with my friends Jason, Jen, and Andrew. I'm so glad we all traveled together. After paying a huge amount of money for our excess bags we got through security and sat down for a beer. We had 5 minutes until boarding supposedly was scheduled to begin. While we were sitting there an airline employee came over and said we were boarding. We had no idea what the hurry was but downed the beer and went to the gate. The gate was completely empty. We thought back to the check in counter - it was also completely empty. Are we going to be the only ones on this flight?? we had no idea what we would find when we got on the plane but, there were people in most of the seats. They had actually boarded the entire plane before it was even time to board. We took our seats and off we went to China.

We landed in Guangzhou and had to collect our bags and check in again. On both flights we were only allowed 20 kg for TWO bags. The airline workers actually burst out laughing when they saw how much our bags weighed. That counter couldn't take our money so we had to go upstairs and wait in two more lines to actually pay and get our bags on the plane. Luckily Jason and Andrew speak a little Chinese. We had no time to do anything in the airport, by the time we were all finished with our bags it was time to board again. The flight was good - I said 2 things to the stewardess in Chinese (with some help from Andrew) and she understood me! Awesome.

We landed in Xi'an, got our bags, I found my ride, and sadly parted ways with Jason, Jen, and Andrew.