From UAE to China - When the lag started

Day Zero. Thursday 9^th of June 2011. The last day of exams after the long-lasted breathtaking semester at AUS, and the day of traveling to China. That day was the ‘Separation’ final exam. I had to start the exam at 1pm, 1 hour earlier than scheduled because I had to reach Dubai airport by 4pm. That day, as well as that whole semester, everything was moving rapidly as if time became a tangible object that we are trying to race.

That day, I had to wake up early enough to finish packing my luggage and make sure everything is set for travel. Packing was not a problem.  The problem was that I had to finish what is left of studying for the separation final exam, and what was left was maybe more than half of the semester’s material. I guess that was the case all of us had faced when studying for any exam or quiz that semester. Maybe if the day has like 28 hours instead of 24 hours we can have enough time to keep track of work at AUS, or, another option would be simply not to sleep at all. Eventually, the exam was worse than I expected. I heard that Dr. Taleb got angry and started belittling the whole class when the exam ended. Well, he actually also got angry at me and I got the first shot from him when I left earlier!

When I left earlier, I went into another state of mind. It felt like time-travelling. I just felt that my body was still at AUS but my brain reached China. Maybe that was because of all the preparation and long thorough thinking about how would life be in China. Maybe because I was worried that things might not be as interesting or convenient to be worth the 3 months of travel. I left earlier and all my family was waiting in the car at the Library’s round about to drop me at Dubai Airport. At that time I really wished there are 28 hours in a day so I would have more time to spend and say goodbye to everyone and especially my family since I see them the least of all. Actually, staying at the dorms in AUS makes me see some friends more than I ever saw my parents themselves. On our way to the airport I felt sick and had a bad stomachache. My body was not prepared to this concept of time-travel and to such a chaos of thoughts and overlapped events. I just closed my eyes and cut the stream of thoughts. This was some sort of meditation and I felt cured in few minutes which actually proved to be quicker than a pain-killer. My flights were as follows:

1)   Dubai Airport - Terminal 2 --> Beijing Airport - Terminal 1: (Chinese Southern Airlines) 7:30hours

2)   Beijing Airport - Terminal 3 --> Yantai Laishan Airport, Shandong: (Air China) 1:15 hours

Throughout the travel, everything went perfect. No problems in luggage and no delays. We actually landed in Beijing half an hour earlier. On the plane from Dubai to Beijing, they served 2 full meals which where international, not Chinese as I was expecting.  But the first touch of China was that all the passengers where Chinese and speaking in Chinese which sounded like robot-talk. I was sitting beside a Chinese lady in silence for around an hour. I was having some peanuts so why not offer her some. As soon as I did, she showed a wide smile and started chatting endlessly! Her English was horrible, as with all the Chinese who speak English. She would not understand “I went to Dubai” but would understand “Yesterday, I go to Dubai.” It turned out that the Chinese language does not have tenses for the verbs. They just use the standard form of the verb such as “eat” along with a time-indicating word such as “today, yesterday, tomorrow”.  I got to know some easy Chinese words from her such as:

•   Cola: “ké-lé”     which literally means something like “Can-Music”
•   Coffee: “ka-fei”
•   Thank you: “xiexie”    the x's is pronounced as ‘sh’

When she started conversing and opening up subjects, I wished that the Chinese in China would be this much social. Probably, I will always keep some peanuts with me in China if it would be the secret to trigger socializing!

The plane was flying against the sun. We saw sunset while departing from Dubai and sunrise when landing in Beijing. When the plane was landing, the tv screens started playing some massaging video and every single person started stretching, except for the very few non-Chinese!

In Beijing Airpot - Terminal 1 

When I reached to Beijing Airport terminal 1 I took a shuttle bus to terminal 3 which was convenient and free of charge. At Beijing airport, employees speak English but yet not well enough. At least they can help with travelling Issues. Terminal 3 of Beijing Airport is incredible. It is like a huge shopping mall. Everything is so organized and looks attractive. There are many international shops like Swarovski, Haagen Dazs and many more restaurants of all types of cuisines. There is free WiFi, and there I noticed everything is blocked in China – Facebook, Youtube, blog sites, and many more websites that are so normal such as some regular company websites. I bought my Chinese phone card from there for 150 Yuans (aprrox. 85 AED) which was more expensive than getting it from outside the airport.

Dragons are the iconic creatures of China. In Beijing Airport Terminal 3

Internal Metro System in Beijing Airport

After waiting an hour, I boarded the second plane. In an hour and a half, we reached Yantai at 11:30am Friday morning. Upon arrival to Yantai where I have been residing, I felt like there was a twisted transition in time and place which created a sort of lag in life (as having a typical lag in time when traveling), and then, the 1^st day in China began.

A block in Yantai as it appears from the airplane. It looked exactly like the miniature models that civil engineers and architecs build 

Renewable energy wind mills. In Shandong

Crossing Yantai is HuangHe (Yellow River). The H's are pronounced as 'kh' or 'خ' the arabic letter.