Chapter 1.

Well, I'm in China! After a week of going through Europe (more on that to come), I am finally HERE! I'm super excited about the things I will be beginning. Today I had a totally chill day. Like I didn't really leave my apartment type of chill. It was GLORIOUS. My body was totally exhausted as well as my mind (and I had discovered how to watch YouTube on my internet here) and it was perfect. 

I am so thankful that my brother, Caleb, was able to join me on this adventure and help me begin to move in. Today, he went and wandered the city while I slept in. But in all fairness, he did go to bed last night at like 6 pm, no joke. I woke him up last night at about 8 pm and his entire body had broken out in hives! Thankfully, the over-the-counter medicine that I brought with me worked wonders. I kept on waking him up every 2 hours or so just to make sure that he was okay.

But back to chronology, we left Europe (Italy) on Friday around our scheduled time of 3 pm. The process of getting to the airport, however, was one of the most stressful processes of my entire life. We arrived at the train station where we left our bags 3 hours before our international flight was supposed to leave (completely out of our hands, but more on that later). I had picked up our luggage while Caleb got us some very much needed bottles of water. When we met up outside of the luggage place, I looked up how long it would take from where we were to get to our airport and it said over an hour. I mentally freaked out. You shouldn't be arriving at the airport for an international flight less than 2 hours before it leaves when you have 4 bags you need to check between the two of us. While I watched the luggage, Caleb went in search of some alternative way to get to the airport without having to spend 100 Euros or more via Uber. He found us a bus that would take us directly to the terminal for 8 Euros each (about the same as a train ticket that far) that left in 8 minutes, on the other side of the train station. So we bought the tickets and booked it to the other side of the train station, as fast as you can with 4 giant suitcases and heavy backpacks. They put our luggage on the underside of the bus, and we just chilled on the top of the bus for a couple of minutes before we left and headed to the airport. The entire time I was checking my watch, counting the seconds until we absolutely needed to be at the airport to check in. We showed up at the airport 2 minutes before the "official" cutoff for checking bags. We grabbed our bags from underneath the bus, and hurried into the airport searching for where the check in was. We found it and there was the LONGEST LINE! We finally got to the front of the line about 60(ish) minutes before boarding. When we got to the counter, we discovered that we could only check one free bag on the flight. I had thought we could check 2. So we had to go to the ticket counter and pay the ridiculous fee for having 2 more bags. It felt like she was taking long on purpose. By the time we got our boarding passes, we had 30 minutes until boarding closed. We rushed to security and there was a super long line (of course). We wait in the line for about 15ish minutes. We finally go through security and I get stopped. In all my flights, I don't think I have been really truly stopped by security. They patted me down and had to check all my carry-on stuff, I think, for bombs. (Because I'm such a threat). Thankfully it only took a couple of minutes to get it all sorted out so we could make it to our terminal. Then we ran into passport control aka customs. The line there was even longer line than security. Because we both have American passports, we got to go through the All Other Passports line that was almost out of the structured line system. I keep trying to figure out what we are going to do if we miss our flight. I couldn't think of anything. By the time that we get to the customs official, it is the exact time that boarding was supposed to end. As soon as we get through that, I pick up the end of my long skirt so I could run and start racing toward the terminal in the hope that we didn't miss our flight. THAT AIRPORT WAS HUGE. I thought that Atlanta or Chicago had long walks to any terminal, but they had nothing on Milan. Our gate was no joke a mile away from customs. I only made it about a quarter of the distance before my asthma caught up to me and I decided to walk. Soon after that, Caleb passed me by walking and told me, "Never do that again. You looked like a total idiot running through the airport like that." What a kind supportive brother he is. We get to our gate and they haven't even started boarding. I have never been so thankful for a delayed flight in my life. We had enough time for Caleb to run and get us some water and snacks because we hadn't eaten much that day. I just looked on my phone and that day, we walked 7 miles. So we were very thirsty and hungry. But we made our flight. One of the best moments of that entire awful, awful day. 

Once we were on the plane, we got to chill, sleep, and look out the window on our way to Moscow. I knew that in Moscow we would have a 2-hour layover, so being about 30 minutes late was no big deal. When we got off, we needed to go through passport control/security/get tickets for our next flight. It was super chill. It took several minutes to get our tickets, then we got to go through passport control. The dude checking our passports had the BIGGEST unibrow I have ever seen. We noticed that our tickets to get to Guangzhou had a later time scheduled for takeoff. So our 1.5-hour layover turned into a 2.5-hour layover. My plan for spending time at the airport was to call my friend Mariah on my international plan for my US phone number. Then I discovered at the airport that Russia was not on any international plan for my service, Verizon. So I tried to chat with her over wifi, but it didn't really work. So I ended up sitting in a coffee shop eating a really bad slice of strawberry cheesecake, drinking a mocha, and listening to the American pop music loudly blaring through the coffee shop speakers. I got to sit and be for a bit and it was great. We got on our flight to Guangzhou via Wuhan and fell asleep almost right away. It was weird though for the first time on our trip to be about the only white people on the plane and a lot taller than everyone else. I'm on 5'7" so it was a totally new experience for me.  We landed in Wuhan and were very confused about what was going on for our transfer to Guangzhou. We ended up going through passport control. Which was kinda funny because of when you normally fill out one of those visa entrance papers, you have to put the address that you are going to be in down, since I didn't know my address for here in Guangzhou, we both put down "Unknown". We made it through and waited to board the plane.

On this next flight, I stayed awake and jammed out to some music and played on my phone. It was awesome. I also got to watch Caleb fall asleep in weird ways while "watching" Power Rangers. I woke him up about 10 minutes before landing and he looked like a dead chicken and was hardcore drooling. Super hilarious. I would have taken a picture but I couldn't have my phone out. Stupid rules. 

We landed about an hour later than we had planned so I messaged the other teacher who was picking Caleb and me up from the airport to let him know we had arrived. We got through all the weird security stuff and waited on our luggage. When we got our luggage, I was super upset because they had broken my favorite suitcase! They pushed in an entire corner of my suitcase! Super mad, but I was too exhausted to do anything. Paul, the person from my school who was picking us up, found us right as soon as we got out of the terminal. We got on the metro with all of the luggage, which was kinda comical. We got off the metro right outside of Canton Tower. Super cool building (and I'm going to be working near it!!!). We met up with another person from the school who had the keys to my apartment and tried to find some sort of taxi to get us to my apartment. It took us a while but we got to my place! I really like this place! I should have a couple of roommates moving in soon so I'm pumped about that! Especially since we will all be expats! My school set it up so that Paul took Caleb and me to dinner to get to know a bit more about the area. We crashed so hard that night. 

The next morning, Sunday, one of the students at the school took us to a "community meeting" and we got to meet some locals and eat some yummy food. She took us after the "meeting" to go see some sights. We got to visit the tomb of an ancient local king and it was super cool! After that, she took us to the local supermarket and I got a few needed things. She was so nice! Once Caleb and I got back to my place, I put away the groceries and made myself a classy PB&J. The supermarket had all the good stuff, white bread, Jif creamy peanut butter, and Smucker's strawberry preserves. In the middle of all of this is when Caleb was napping and having his hives/allergic reaction. Once while I was checking on him, I gave him a peanut butter sandwich so he got to eat and I made sure that he was okay. 

But China is awesome. I'm so glad to be here! Also, random side note- One of my favorite features about my apartment is in the room I chose that there is a window seat. It overlooks the whole city, that you can see from my apartment. I literally have been wanting a window seat my entire life. For a while I thought I might move to San Fransico, CA, and get one there. But this is so much better. It's the perfect place to curl up with a good book right before going to bed. 

WELL, there is so much more that I will be telling in the next installment of my new life chaper in Guangzhou, China. You are loved and catch you on the flip side!