The Xining Camp finally left the hotel where we had been living for the past two weeks.

Originally we were told we would be picked up at 10:00 AM and delivered to the airport for a 11:05 flight.  Yes, you read that right; a 11:05 flight.  Needless to say we had to push and press hard to get that time changed to 7:30 AM to get the vans loaded and leave the hotel at 8:00.

Well, the vans arrived at 7:45 and we shoved the luggage on with the help of Adam (one of the students who decided to come early to take us to the airport) and jumped on the vans.  After a quick head count we were on our way to the Xining airport.

We arrived at 8:40 and immediately got our stuff together and started the waiting process to get our checked luggage in.  Out of 20 people only two people had over weight bags.

One of our favorite students (Kitty) also came to the airport.  She brought our team members  Tibetan scarves  which meant “Safe travels and best wishes”. Wearing the scarves we lined up for our Security check, and waved good-bye all the way through.

We found our appropriate gate and we began to wait for our boarding time.

After an hour or so it was time to start listening for the call to board but it did not come.  After a short time yelling started at the counter with some Chinese…there was a problem.

At first they said it was an oil problem and they were doing some maintenance but as time went on the yelling continued and the story changed.

We met a couple of Chinese that spoke pretty good English and they said from what they could tell our plane was over booked or the cargo was overweight in which case passengers might get bumped.

Ultimately, it came down to there were too many passengers so there was either 10-20 that would have to be bumped or accept a later flight.  The Chinese passengers were relentless.  In fact, they followed the airline workers from one end of the airport to the other arguing about the whole problem.

We finally got the word that we would be either on a 3:10 or 6:00 flight.  At 3:15 we were still waiting and suddenly one of the airline attendants was running towards our gate and announcing that our flight was boarding.  So we all jumped up and headed for the gate.

We all got on the plane and suddenly the yelling started up again with the same Chinese man and another lady.  As it turns out we learned that our luggage was not going to be on the flight.  We were thinking that must be wrong since we had been there since 9:00 am.  But after we arrived in Beijing the airport staff met us at the gate telling us where to go to have our luggage forwarded.  So it was true…our luggage did not make our 6 hour delayed flight.

At any rate, we are here in Beijing in a great hotel with soft beds and a HOT shower.

Most of us have been out to eat now and, for Carol and I, we are getting ready to close our eyes for night.

Tomorrow…a western breakfast.  Yum yum!