Day 2

Hello from Hong Kong!!!! I flew into China this morning at 5 am (it's already Sunday, September 9 here!) and I have a 12 1/2 hour layover, only a few more hours to go! Getting a visa for China is unreasonably expensive and complicated so I'm stuck in the airport but it's turned out to be pretty okay, there's a lot to explore! But first I'll talk about getting here. Waiting at LAX was pretty surreal, I had way too much time to think. I was feelin pretty weird about everything that was about to happen. Going through security, the TSA officer had to open every single canister of film I had (there were 25) to make sure I wasn't hiding anything. That held up the group a good 10 minutes but it was okay. When we finally walked down the tunnel to the plane I started to finally feel ready for all that was to come. I stepped on board and was greeted by a very tall, very skinny, Chinese flight attendant named Keiko. She showed me to my seat, which was very hard and plasticy, and I sat down. The seat belts had an airbag attached to them which was odd and slightly uncomfortable. We took off at 12:30 AM and I fell asleep almost instantly. Several hours later, Keiko woke me up for my vegetarian meal, which was pretty decent mushroom risotto. After that, I read for a while and flipped through the movie options. Lo and behold, what was the first movie to come up? Brave!!!!! I got excited and took it as a good omen. I ate my last American indulgences (Cheez-its and Oreos), read a few more chapters of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, and then fell asleep again. The 15 hour flight actually didn't feel too long, and before I knew it I was landing in Hong Kong, which was still very dark so early in the morning. Since my arrival I've napped some more and purused around the large and bustling airport. Almost every store is filled with high end designer fashions, but  sprinkled amongst the Jimmy Choo's and Versace's are some fun Asian candy stores, filled with weird gummies and dried fish. We also found a store which sold bodily essentials like deoderant or toothpaste, and in their vitamin section they had an ample stock of shark cartilage and sheep placenta, how wild! The airport is also abundant with really delicious food (I just ate really delicious wide rice noodles and miso soup). So that's all for now, I board my plane for Kathmandu at 5:45 HK time and it should be about a 6 hour flight. And apparently right when we get there we'll begin a 5 day trek to our rural homestay! How insane! So everything is swell and beautiful. The airport is surrounded by really majestic and huge mountains so that has provided some serene scenery. Anyway, I'm thinking of everyone and missing everyone! I hope you've all had a great weekend! I'll talk to ya when I can. From here on out the internet access will be pretty inconsisten but hey I'll do my best! And hey I'm in f***ing Asia!!! (I've been saying that in my head a lot today).