Here's a note from my journal:

Eating a “bucket of noodles,” the Chinese equivalent of the $1 burger, at the airport. We ate several of these over the course of our trip. They're available everywhere and at 75cents-$1 you can't beat the price. The airports all provide boiling water.

Yesterday was a travel day. We went to see the three gorges in the morning and then drove to the airport and sat around there for seven hours. It was brutal. I had this moment when we were sitting in the waiting room where I realized, here we are in a smoky airport waiting room in the middle of China, no one around me speaks my language, and yet I feel completely comfortable here kicking up my feet and reading. It was this strange mix of the foreign and familiar.

This morning we head back to the airport in Chengdu on route to Lhasa. Its the much anticipated part of our trip. I hope it lives up to my hopes. There were several people on the boat who had just come from there. When we asked them about it, their eyes got wide and they struggled to describe it. “It was crazy,” is what they usually ended up saying. They said there was a LOT of construction and that the Chinese military was very present there. They said “It's back 50 years so don't expect much.” Fortunately, that's precisely what I want to see!

We have a tour guide- by necessity. I hope that we can communicate and get close enough that we can have a more custom trip. I'd love to get outside the city and see the outskirts a bit. As always, I'm hoping for a really authentic experience.

Several people of the group that had just been got sick. We're keeping our fingers crossed and our prayers constant that we won't. We started taking a high altitude pill yesterday: Acetzolamide, in hope of proactively warding it off. But there were those that had also taken it that got sick- perhaps from the pill itself. Hopefully our low dosage will prove best.

Chengdu hotel

We arrived in Chengdu at 12:40 last night. We set off to find a taxi. It was a little nerve racking as no one we spoke to knew any English. Tom showed the guy selling tickets for the bus to downtown our hotel's address and he said “taxi.” So we lined up for a taxi and hoped for the best. Despite the language barrier we were able to communicate enough for the taxi driver to first see the address, then call the hotel to make sure he knew their location. At first he pulled up to the “Home Inn” a sketchy looking place. Our hotel was called the “Homeland Hotel.” And considering it was supposed to be 5 star I figured he had to be wrong. That's when I got a bit nervous that he didn't know where he was going. But a quick call to the hotel cleared things up and he flipped a U-turn and found the hotel across the street.

I continue to be amazed at how confidently Tom goes about figuring out a new country. He doesn't seem remotely dazzed by the prospect of communicating his needs in a country in which he doesn't speak the language! Babe, I can't imagine a better travel companion. I love you!