Day 9 - The Journey Home

About noon we headed to the Shanghai airport for our 2 and a half hour flight to Beijing. Everything went according to plan and we took off at 3:00 pm, landed in Beijing at 5:15 pm. We had a 3 hour layover so we spent the last of our yuan on Pizza hut, water and caramels. Our flight boarded at 9:00 pm on Friday. This flight, Glenn and I decided to request aisle seats for both of us. We ended up 4 rows apart with empty middle seats so we both had a really pleasant flight – sleeping away most of it. We landed in LA at 4:15 pm on Friday – more than 4 hours BEFORE we departed. The international dateline does weird things. We had previously decided to spend the night in LA so we didn’t have to worry about immigration or customs. I quickly texted some good friends from college. Lucky for us, they were free. They came and picked us from the hotel and we headed to Rush Street in Culver City for an awesome dinner! It was nice not to have to worry about the ice in my drink or if the bathroom would have toilets. After a quick sleep tonight, we’ll be headed back to LA.