Surreal kashgar...

I woke up this morning at 4:30 am to horns bleating and "Happy Birthday" spewing out a car's speakers circling the block below my hotel room. It's a funny place--- I love it so far. I'm just excited to be in a new part of a country that's relatively old to me.

Last night back in NYC was the premiere for a project I was involved in for several months this year-- CNN's Planet in Peril. Wish I had been able to attend-- especially since it would have been with amazing friends from my agency...Annick, Lauren, Sarah and Aidan...next time hopefully. I always miss the parties!!!

Oh the horrors...

Here now in Beijing. Flight was long (13+) hours, but not as bad as ones I've flown before. But wow. United Airlines internationally is even worse than I remember. The flight attendants breached new levels of crabbiness-- pole vaulting over established levels of decency. The sound continually cut out during the movies-- at all the key plot points. As far as the "food" goes (and yes, I know it's cliche to complain about airline food)-- it had to have been carcinogenic in the least, harvested from post-apocalyptic fields, fertilized with radiation. Ugh. I've peeled back more than my fair share of tin foil on bad inflight meals, but wow.

We ran some errands yesterday-- grabbing a cordless razor and some power strips. Stopped off for a quick meal and a beer and then an Ambien supported night of sleep at the Sino-Swiss Hotel. Now I'm sitting with some carry-on while we round up last minute cups of Starbucks and hop the 5-hr. flight to Urumqi. We got tagged with $1200 USD in excess baggage for this flight alone-- so maybe that'll buy us a meal upgrade....