Shifting Gates and Sweaty Seats
The days of the week have completely blurred and I have no idea what day it is. Fortunately this is a feeling I remember from my university days. I don't mean this as an endorsement of the life I used to live as some sort of missiological training – I just mean I learned to operate with few of my faculties firing on all cylinders because of it.
One of the fun games we like to play in airport terminals is "What Gate is Our Flight at Now?" This is Air China's way of amusing non-Chinese Speaking foreigners. Randomly throughout the waiting time they will move the gate for boarding a flight. There is no warning and to keep it as interesting as possible they don't even let other Air China staff know.

As a group we assign one person to watch the information at the gate we are parked at and another to watch the flight information board and I, by default, am charged with listening for our flight number in Chinese (( have mastered the numbers 0-20 in Chinese!!!). Luckily there is never a fear of being late for a flight – I fully expect that they will still be holding the plane to Harbin for Passengers Li and Liu when we fly back through Beijing!!

The service on Air China has been wonderful – but I am not the target audience that they have geared their seating plan on. I don't fit comfortably into most Canadian jets, but being both fat and tall is really not working to my advantage in the PRC. For the first time since we landed in China I am glad for the 97% humidity - it allows me to squeeze into my seat. I am not sure the person sitting next to me shares my joy!

We are headed for Chengdu. We will spend the next 24 days in this city. It is the economical, political and educational centre of Southwestern China. It is also hot!!