Day 2 Hong Kong

While writing this first part of the blog for ABS 482, we have a little over 8 hours left in our 16 hour flight to Hong Kong. Our flight from Sioux Falls to Chicago gave us a pretty good lesson in what turbulence is. For about 5 minutes halfway through our hour flight we had what our pilot referred to as "disturbing turbulence". That’s really not what we were hoping to hear at 5:30 in the morning, but we landed in Chicago safely. We would spend the next 6 hours hanging out in the Chicago airport. We broke off into groups, some of us sleeping by the boarding gate, others going to get breakfast, and others just to stroll around. The group I was in landed at Chili’s where we were hoping to dig into a burger they had that was "drenched" in mango bbq sauce. Unfortunately it was at 7 in the morning and they didn't serve breakfast until 10. So we ate our breakfast then headed back to the gate. While waiting until we were hungry enough for lunch a group of us started to play a game of charades, this killed a lot of time and kept us awake since most of us didn't sleep much last night. Something that we all thought was weird was in the bathroom stalls around the seat of the toilet there was a plastic sheeting that rotated giving each new occupant a clean seat. Our flight from Chicago to Hong Kong is a 16 hour flight. The turbulence so far has been a lot lighter than our first flight because our current plane is so much bigger. Everyone has their own separate TV where they have the ability to choose from current TV shows, new and old movies, or just listen to music. On this screen we also have the ability to see a map of our flight, I was surprised to see that instead of flying across the Pacific we are flying over Canada and the polar ice caps. On this flight we have had one meal that consisted of either vegetarian lasagna or chicken with rice. Now that they've turned the lights off, I plan on catching up on some sleep.    Noah Thaler

It was an amazing sight being able to see Hong Kong from the plane. All of us had our heads pressed to the window to check out the sights. Once we all made it through immigration and got our bags, we met our tour guides for while we are in Hong Kong. We then loaded the bus and were on our way to supper. It took about an hour to get to where we ate. The tour guide, Ling, pointed out various buildings and sights along the way. We went over a bridge that looks like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In order to get to the restaurant we had to ride an elevator up to the floor. The elevator was very small but we had to fit many people in it. At supper we were able to try a wide variety of foods, such as: smoked fish, different kinds of tofu, calamari, duck, sweet and sour chicken. Today is Clayton's 23rd birthday, so we were able to celebrate. We then made our way to the hotel where we checked in and rested up for our first full day in Hong Kong.    Elizabeth Johnson