Kelly writes...

Our journey to China began at 8 in the morning when we went to Ithaca airport.  We took a propeller plane to Newark airport.  After we checked in at Newark, many of us went to the food court to get our "last American meal."  The Continental Airlines plane was very nice.  There were individual TVs at each seat which had over 200 movies and 100 TV shows to choose from while in flight.  There were also games and music to listen to. 

During the flight, we had to fill out a health questionnaire.  After the extremely long 12 and a half hour flight to Beijing, we had to sit on the plane for another 20 minutes or so while two doctors came around and took our temperature with a laser.  We all passed, and moved on to the first passport check station.  We turned in our health forms, and if any of us put down that we currently had any of the symptoms, we got pulled aside and quarantined for further inspection.  Three of us put down "cough" as a current symptom and went to the location.  They checked our axillary temperature and asked about a million questions regarding our symptoms.  After a while, they released us and we moved on to customs.  The bags had all been gathered, and we took a bus to the other terminal in Beijing airport.  The building was absolutely huge and beautiful.  We stood in line to check our bags in for our Chengdu flight.  A group of Chinese people began taking pictures with us, excited to see Americans (especially blonde hair). 

We got some food in the food court, which surprisingly had American food, as well, then made our way to the gate for our flight.  The flight itself was very turbulent and the lights kept flickering, but we made it safely to Chengdu.  There weren't many people on the flight, so many of us were able to spread out and lay down to sleep. When we arrived at Chengdu, we got our bags and were greeted by three students from Chengdu Sport University.  We made the half hour bus ride to the school, and checked into our rooms.  The rooms are very nice and pretty big, and each room has its own bathroom.  The power outlets are kind of tricky to figure out, but the internet worked well.  Overall, we had 26 hours of travel, and I think all of us were just exhausted by the time we got here.