Life in the Land of the Rising Sun: Friday December 23rd, 2011

“…oh no…”

I opened my eyes and blearily looked for the glow of our digital bedside clock. As my eyes focused, Karl continued.

“It’s 5:26. Should we run?”

“Let’s go!”

We leapt up and started throwing on our already laid out clothes. Our train to make our ride to the airport was leaving in 23 minutes.

It takes 20 minutes to walk to the station.

Fortunately, we had packed and showered the night before. We were out the door at 5:37 with 14 minutes to catch our train.

We hurtled towards the train station through the dark, cold morning. As we approached the station, I breathed a sigh of relief: our train was on the nearest platform. I eased to a walk as Karl-rolling the luggage-caught up to me.

We made it. With a full minute to spare!

On our bus ride to the airport, we slowly relaxed. The sun was just rising, glistening on the snowcap of Mt. Fuji. A thin crescent moon and a few bright stars adorned the sky. The perfect scenery to calm the mind and heart rate.

After this turbulent start of our journey to India, things calmed down. We made it to the airport with enough time for breakfast and last minute purchases.

The flight to India was broken up into two separate flights. Flight number one stopped in Guangzhou, China for a twenty-one hour layover. (EW!)

The flight was very comfortable. Karl and I watched the newest Harry Potter movie on our tiny personal-sized airplane TVs. Sooner than we knew it, we touched down in Guangzhou.

As we waited to go through immigration, we discovered that our airline (China Southern) was paying for a hotel for us that night and we were granted special 24 hour passes to stay in China. A wonderful and unexpected surprise.

After waiting for what seemed an eternity, the driver from the hotel came to pick us up. We reached the hotel, learned that breakfast would be brought to our room the following morning, and went to our room.