Remember that time we sat in the Beijing airport for 18 hours?

So far, my trip to China has been nothing but a long list of things gone wrong.

1. I cried at the Des Moines airport while drinking alone at the bar after everyone dropped me off.

2. Once we got on the plane to Beijing, I spilled my drink all over myself and my blanket.

3. There were like 3 screaming babies on our plane.

4. Once we landed in Beijing, we couldn't find a place to store our luggage, and therefore couldn't get to our hostel to spend the night. We decided to pull an all-nighter, and being the paranoid person that I am, I can't bring myself to sleep in an airport even when I know that other people are watching my luggage.

5. It took me a total of SIX hours to get connected to the real internet.

6. None of my voltage converters or plug-ins work. They fit, yes. But they won't charge anything. Right now, I'm using someone else's power cord, but what happens tomorrow morning when I need to straighten my hair? Yet to be determined.

7. I left my camera's memory card in Iowa. Yep. So no pictures for me until I buy a new memory card, which is a real bummer because there are SO MANY THINGS I want to take pictures of here.

The plus side to all of this, though, is that I'm in a surprisingly good mood. Despite all of these things going wrong, I'm not really upset about it -- which is extremely out of character for me. I think being so far outside of what is normal for me, I'm just able to let go because, really, when no one around me speaks the same language and I have to order food by pointing and nodding, what can I even do about it?

Hopefully once we get to Shijiazhuang, Kirk can either help me figure out my converter issues or bring me somewhere that I can buy a new one. That's really the top of my list of concerns now that I have the internet thing figured out and I can keep in touch with everyone. I can't even imagine what this would be like if it were 10 years ago and I couldn't have almost instant access to talking to whomever I want.

We still have about five hours until Kirk gets here, so who knows how many other posts I'll put up out of sheer boredom.