I came home today, what a wonderful day. I could scarcely wait. I was really bummed this morning though because I finished my book last night so what am I going to read in the airport and on the plane? In the shower as I was washing my hair I found a spot on my head that was really sore. It took me a while to figure out why I had a sore head but then I remembered that when I was swimming on Friday I was on my back and didn't notice when the ropes went yellow and I ran into the wall of the swimming pool. That did hurt and I still have a scab on my head. Now the shower was a very different experience. As I said, it is this glass cube in the middle of the room.
They did have a curtain on the outside of the shower for privacy but since it was only me I thought I would go for the whole experience. You might imagine that I was concerned about people outside seeing in but I was on the ninth floor and pretty much above everyone else. Even so, it is very difficult to see from the bright side of a windoe into the dark side. Since one wall of my room is also all windows this really felt like I was showering outside. To add to the effect, the stone was all very natural looking stone and the floor was a stone with a rough texture (non skid surface) so I could easily imagine I was outside in the wild standing on a natural stone floor.
Very weird. Not only was my room really cheap but it included a free breakfast too. It may have been free but that was all it was worth too. They really get their temperatures mixed up over here. I didn't get a choice for breakfast, you just took what they gave you. I got fried eggs but they were cooked until they were like leather. They were also served cold, gross. I also got a glass of milk but it was served hot, gross. After breakfast it was off to the airport. A couple of weeks ago I received a power point file talking about how the Beijing airport is the largest building in the world and how quickly it was built with all that cheap Chinese labor.
The file was implying that it might even be slave labor. Well, I think calling it slave labor might be stretching it but when you live in poverty you can't be too picky in what jobs you take. We really have little idea of how lucky we are in America. They pay people here about $0.25 an hour and they have to put up borders around their economic zones to keep their own people out of the economic zones unless they have a job offer. Otherwise they would be overwhelmed with people trying to get jobs. So much for the communist government taking care of you. China is more free market driven than we are. Luckily my flight was in terminal three which was definitely the terminal described and it was huge but I find it hard to imagine it was the largest building in the world. I don't know if I've been in a bigger building but I'm sure somewhere there is a bigger building maybe not. In any case, it was certainly very large and very majestic. Everyone told me to get there three hours early because things can go wrong during check in and I can assure that is true but today I move right through everything and there I was in this terminal with two hours to kill and no book to read.
I wandered around all the stores looking for potential gifts (since my shopping trip last night got cancelled) but finally I had just seen it all and was bored out of my mind. There was only one tiny bookstore in the whole place and only two shelves in the book store was in English and only a couple of those books looked interesting and they cost a fortune but finally I broke down and paid fifteen dollars for a book. To make it even more funny, it was a hard cover LARGE PRINT book. Oh well, it makes it easier for me to read it. I've never read Dale Brown before but the book is good. Apparantly this "Dreamland" is a series and I'm obviously in the middle of the series
but you don't need to know the past to follow the story. The only problem is that now I'm going to have to go back and read the other books. It was a good thing I got the book though because as it turned out my flight was delayed by an hour. The flight home was pretty much uneventful and not much of excitement happened in San Francisco. Crossing the date line however jumped me back twenty four hours so even though I left Beijing at noon I landed in San Francisco at nine in the morning. I landed before I left Beijing. I did find it interesting that they had drug dogs walking around the San Francisco airport just like they did in Osaka. These dogs though were little beagles sand I loved it. There were three or four little Bridgets running around. They were a whole lot more spry than Bridget though. Because I was so late coming in I had to rebook my flight to San Diego. As I was was flying into San Diego I took a picture of my neighborhood. I've marked my house with an "X" and put another "X" on top of black mountain. OK, so the "X"'s are very tiny but if you double click on the picture it will open up an enlarged picture in your browser. Penasquitos canyon is all the green area below my house. I also figured I would take a picture of the two aircraft carriers docked at Coronado Island. I got home while the family was all in church but the family had left me a nice "Welcome Home" sign on the front door. Alycia had arrived home from Europe the day before me so she also had a sign on the garage door. I signed her sign and the went in the house but before I could hop in the shower Ben came home to visit and then before Ben left Alycia came home to visit. The whole family came home and we had a wonderful roast beef fathers-day dinner with potatoes and gravy. It was wonderful to have to normal food again. We then had one of my favorite deserts, angle food cake. Well, it was a lemon flavored version of an angel food cake and I loved it. It is so good to be home.
I came home today, what a wonderful day. I could scarcely wait. I was really bummed this morning though because I finished my book last night so what am I going to read in the airport and on the plane? In the shower as I was washing my hair I found a spot on my head that was really sore. It took me a while to figure out why I had a sore head but then I remembered that when I was swimming on Friday I was on my back and didn't notice when the ropes went yellow and I ran into the wall of the swimming pool. That did hurt and I still have a scab on my head. Now the shower was a very different experience. As I said, it is this glass cube in the middle of the room. 
They did have a curtain on the outside of the shower for privacy but since it was only me I thought I would go for the whole experience. You might imagine that I was concerned about people outside seeing in but I was on the ninth floor and pretty much above everyone else. Even so, it is very difficult to see from the bright side of a windoe into the dark side. Since one wall of my room is also all windows this really felt like I was showering outside. To add to the effect, the stone was all very natural looking stone and the floor was a stone with a rough texture (non skid surface) so I could easily imagine I was outside in the wild standing on a natural stone floor. 
Very weird. Not only was my room really cheap but it included a free breakfast too. It may have been free but that was all it was worth too. They really get their temperatures mixed up over here. I didn't get a choice for breakfast, you just took what they gave you. I got fried eggs but they were cooked until they were like leather. They were also served cold, gross. I also got a glass of milk but it was served hot, gross. After breakfast it was off to the airport. A couple of weeks ago I received a power point file talking about how the Beijing airport is the largest building in the world and how quickly it was built with all that cheap Chinese labor. 
The file was implying that it might even be slave labor. Well, I think calling it slave labor might be stretching it but when you live in poverty you can't be too picky in what jobs you take. We really have little idea of how lucky we are in America. They pay people here about $0.25 an hour and they have to put up borders around their economic zones to keep their own people out of the economic zones unless they have a job offer. Otherwise they would be overwhelmed with people trying to get jobs. So much for the communist government taking care of you. China is more free market driven than we are. Luckily my flight was in terminal three which was definitely the terminal described and it was huge but I find it hard to imagine it was the largest building in the world. I don't know if I've been in a bigger building but I'm sure somewhere there is a bigger building maybe not. In any case, it was certainly very large and very majestic. Everyone told me to get there three hours early because things can go wrong during check in and I can assure that is true but today I move right through everything and there I was in this terminal with two hours to kill and no book to read.
I wandered around all the stores looking for potential gifts (since my shopping trip last night got cancelled) but finally I had just seen it all and was bored out of my mind. There was only one tiny bookstore in the whole place and only two shelves in the book store was in English and only a couple of those books looked interesting and they cost a fortune but finally I broke down and paid fifteen dollars for a book. To make it even more funny, it was a hard cover LARGE PRINT book. Oh well, it makes it easier for me to read it. I've never read Dale Brown before but the book is good. Apparantly this "Dreamland" is a series and I'm obviously in the middle of the series 
but you don't need to know the past to follow the story. The only problem is that now I'm going to have to go back and read the other books. It was a good thing I got the book though because as it turned out my flight was delayed by an hour. The flight home was pretty much uneventful and not much of excitement happened in San Francisco. Crossing the date line however jumped me back twenty four hours so even though I left Beijing at noon I landed in San Francisco at nine in the morning. I landed before I left Beijing. I did find it interesting that they had drug dogs walking around the San Francisco airport just like they did in Osaka. These dogs though were little beagles sand I loved it. There were three or four little Bridgets running around. They were a whole lot more spry than Bridget though. Because I was so late coming in I had to rebook my flight to San Diego. As I was was flying into San Diego I took a picture of my neighborhood. I've marked my house with an "X" and put another "X" on top of black mountain. OK, so the "X"'s are very tiny but if you double click on the picture it will open up an enlarged picture in your browser. Penasquitos canyon is all the green area below my house. I also figured I would take a picture of the two aircraft carriers docked at Coronado Island. I got home while the family was all in church but the family had left me a nice "Welcome Home" sign on the front door. Alycia had arrived home from Europe the day before me so she also had a sign on the garage door. I signed her sign and the went in the house but before I could hop in the shower Ben came home to visit and then before Ben left Alycia came home to visit. The whole family came home and we had a wonderful roast beef fathers-day dinner with potatoes and gravy. It was wonderful to have to normal food again. We then had one of my favorite deserts, angle food cake. Well, it was a lemon flavored version of an angel food cake and I loved it. It is so good to be home.
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