Returning Home Posted May 28, 2004 at 12:00 am

Everyone made it to the bus on time this morning. It’s understandable; it’s been a great experience, but by the end I think we were all ready to return home.

I secured photos with all our tour guides (Simon, Amanda, and Jackie) at the airport as we daparted. I also did some last-minute shopping at the airport before our boarding time. I found t-shirts for Mom and Uncle Tinker, and a copy of the Chinese FHM magazine for myself. Even with airport pricing, all the goods at the Beijing airport were pretty cheap. This turned out to be a stark contrast to the Tokyo/Narita airport. During our layover in Tokyo, I picked up some candy and a random manga. Everything else was pretty expensive.

I had to hustle to get to my connecting flight when we arrived in Los Angeles, as I had one of the shortest layovers. It just didn’t occur to me that we would have to go through customs when we re-entered the country. In the end, it wasn’t that big of a hassle and a few kind people even let us ahead. I got to my connecting gate in plenty of time.

Fellow Tech student and mission attendee Matt was also on the same Delta flight back to Atlanta. Speaking of which, I was not impressed at all with Delta on this trip. Delta charges for most amenities on domestic flights�stuff I would take for granted as being free of charge. But the plane arrived without event, and Titus was waiting in baggage claim to pick me up.

So ends my experience on the 2004 International Mission on Engineering to China.