From the air above Siberia...

Eight hours and 4150 miles into the flight, and Beijing is now within sight on our flight tracker. Hooray! I may regret saying this, but so far the twelve hour flight is much easier to handle than the five hour one. I think it's easier to sort of settle in for the long haul across the world and pace your energy, food, and activities than to sit tapping your foot and eating Biscoff as you go across the US.

I managed to sleep about four hours when we first got on the plane, so now I'm staying awake
until we reach our hotel in...ten hours. Not so bad. I have a half-baked notion that following China time on the plane will help with the jet lag. We shall see.

The PC folks in China ("post") are still concerned about H1N1--not that it is a threat to our health, but that some of us will be quarantined and miss the first week of training. We have no control over it, since even though none of us is sick, if we are within three rows on the plane of someone who is quarantined, we may be quarantined too. Fortunately, with their usual equanimity, post has a contigency plan. One of the staff will meet us in Beijing this year to help deal with any issues. They've also apparently prepared self-study packets for any unfortunate quarantinees (Is that a word?) to begin training on their own. Oh well. As they put it in our staging materials, it's just one week out of two years, and it would give us time to get over jet lag and get rested. Way to think positive!