By: Abby Artmann
The first week in China has flown by for everyone in the ACE program. But our journey here was as exciting as it was challenging. This began with my very first obstacle of getting to the airport. My friend who was supposed to give me a ride locked her keys in her car and couldn’t pick me up. Twenty panic stricken calls later and my housemate and I are driving madly to the airport only to find out that my flight has been canceled. I met up with a teammate in the RDU airport and we were both re-routed to LAX for our 15 hour flight to Hong Kong. Upon arriving in Hong Kong, we met up with the rest of our ACE team for our flight to Kunming. Kunming proved to be full of surprises as well when my bag was overweight and I had to communicate with the ticket lady in order to understand how much it would cost. She re-directed me to a second counter and in the chaos I forgot my passport at her counter. It was at this second ticket counter that I learned that lines are not a thing in Asia. This contrasts with my western experience with everyone waiting their turn. In Kunming everyone was pushing and yelling their way to the front. I followed suit, finally getting my bag paid for and made my way to security. It was there that I realized I had lost my passport and frantically ran back through the airport to recover this very necessary lost article. After securing my passport a teammate and I dashed to the gate to find out that our flight had been delayed due to an equipment malfunction. We waited patiently for the faulty landing gear to be replaced and then boarded the plane, where we were met with another surprise. We were twenty feet from the ground and about to land when the pilots pulled up and turned the plane back around to Kunming. We touched down back where we started and waited at the same gate for several minutes before they re-boarded us on the same plane and we took off for Shangri-La. It was smooth sailing after we touched down in our final destination but the whole experience left me understanding how necessary flexibility and adaptability is when living, working, traveling, and communicating with other cultures. In this instance, going with the flow and meeting challenges as they arose with our travel proved to be a wonderful exercise in facing, overcoming, and learning from obstacles.
The first week in China has flown by for everyone in the ACE program. But our journey here was as exciting as it was challenging. This began with my very first obstacle of getting to the airport. My friend who was supposed to give me a ride locked her keys in her car and couldn’t pick me up. Twenty panic stricken calls later and my housemate and I are driving madly to the airport only to find out that my flight has been canceled. I met up with a teammate in the RDU airport and we were both re-routed to LAX for our 15 hour flight to Hong Kong. Upon arriving in Hong Kong, we met up with the rest of our ACE team for our flight to Kunming. Kunming proved to be full of surprises as well when my bag was overweight and I had to communicate with the ticket lady in order to understand how much it would cost. She re-directed me to a second counter and in the chaos I forgot my passport at her counter. It was at this second ticket counter that I learned that lines are not a thing in Asia. This contrasts with my western experience with everyone waiting their turn. In Kunming everyone was pushing and yelling their way to the front. I followed suit, finally getting my bag paid for and made my way to security. It was there that I realized I had lost my passport and frantically ran back through the airport to recover this very necessary lost article. After securing my passport a teammate and I dashed to the gate to find out that our flight had been delayed due to an equipment malfunction. We waited patiently for the faulty landing gear to be replaced and then boarded the plane, where we were met with another surprise. We were twenty feet from the ground and about to land when the pilots pulled up and turned the plane back around to Kunming. We touched down back where we started and waited at the same gate for several minutes before they re-boarded us on the same plane and we took off for Shangri-La. It was smooth sailing after we touched down in our final destination but the whole experience left me understanding how necessary flexibility and adaptability is when living, working, traveling, and communicating with other cultures. In this instance, going with the flow and meeting challenges as they arose with our travel proved to be a wonderful exercise in facing, overcoming, and learning from obstacles.