China1

Took off from Newark Airport in the afternoon. The flight was 15 hours. However, they made it as pleasant as they possibly could with a touchscreen thingy in the seat infront of us. It had movies, music, tv shows, games etc. I planned on sleeping the first 8 hours as my strategy to reduce jet lag. But i maybe got 2 hours throughout the entire trip. So, when that didn't work, I looked at the music they had available. They had some ok pop music. They only had ONE reggaeton artist on there. It was a pretty wide selection so I was surprised. And it wasn't even the most famous ones like Daddy Yankee or Don Omar. It was Tito El Bambino, which I have come to like alot recently. And his music is really moving away from Reggaeton and starting to just be Pop-ish and mostly singing. So there was no reggaeton. I listened to his song Maquina del Tiempo about 30 times througouht the flight, it had Wisin Y Yandel on it, which are my favorite reggaetoneros. In between listening to Maquina del Tiempo, I watched a movie called "He just not that into you". It was ok. They didn't demean the men too much. But the women pretty much got their way overall. Anyways, I watched some Family Guy and American Dad in Zahra's honor, lol.

The flight was weird. We were chasing sunlight the whole time, therefore it stayed sunny throughout. It was cool watching the screen as they showed where in the world was dark and where was light. The descent was amazing. We circled around a bunch of mountainous islands and then saw Hong Kong from the distance. HUGE CITY!! So many lights and tall buildings. Like crazy lights, not just windows. We arrived and then had to take some long bus rides to get to the City of Shenzhen where the Games were being held. The thing that was immediately striking was the clarity of the architecture if that means anything, lol. So many pure shapes and designs. Also, the apartment buildings. Ridiculously high towers, even though there is blank space around it. Everything is scaled up so high. I guess in anticipation for more and more city dwellers. I saw a sign that said something like 20million people move to the city from the countryside each year in China. Maybe it was 2mil or 200,000, lol. Eventually we got to the place, super duper tired, took awhile to get our bags through security then get our Credentials we had to wear everywhere. The dining hall there is open 24 hours so we went there before sleeping. I was concerned the whole time with my protein intake cuz of non-halal food. But they had different lines for food, and the first one that greets you is titled "Muslim". Alhamdulillah. Good Night.