THE MOST HORRIBLE TERRIBLE FRIGHTFUL FLIGHT OF MY LIFE

What an adventure, coming to China. Everything about my trip was wonderful, all connections were great until we were one hour from landing in Beijing, or so I thought. I was sitting next to my Aunt Evie, who joined me in going to China, and I told her how wonderful this flight was because it went straight from San Francisco to Beijing with no long layovers in Japan, Taiwan or Korea. I was stoked and not too tired because the overseas flight was only 12 hours long. It didn't even bother me that the video monitors in our cabin didn't work so there were no movies. I just read, visited and slept a little. Then the pilot came on and informed us that he had diverted from our flight into Beijing because of severe turbulence reported across Russia where we would have flown. So now we were almost out of fuel so we would be stopping in Japan to refuel. Refueling would take at least an hour, then it would be another 3 hours toBeijing. We were not allowed to deplane in Japan.

We were back in the air within an hour and the flight attendants were told to prepare our last meal. The phrase "last meal" troubled me some. After the meal we all settled down for the two-hour flight into Beijing and tried to get some sleep. When evidently the violent turbulence moved south and caught up with us.I have never felt anything like this before. I felt sure the plane would fall apart. Not one person of the 450 aboard remained asleep. It probably lasted at least 30 minutes and would come in waves. At three different times everyone on the plane screamed in unison. I really though I would not survive. I prayed and felt I was ready to die, but this was NOT the way I wanted to go. I prayed for peace about it, but to be honest I was scared to death.

My Aunt Evie who is 85 was very calm. Bless her soul. PTL-We did survive and made it to Beijing. Everyone clapped when the plane landed. We had missed our connecting flight to get to Ben's city. So after customs, I had to convince them to change us to a later flight and that we didn't need to pay again because it wasn't our fault we missed the flight. All of this was done in English, Chinese and "No-Speak-Chinese” sign language.

It was very hard for me to get on another airplane but I knew what was at the end of the flight.... Ben, Deysi, Gabriel, and Ariel were waiting. I managed to find an Internet cafe and email Ben and Laban that we would not be on the flight Ben was waiting for. It was up to Laban to get a hold of Ben. I may just stay in China forever, just kidding, I have a lot to come home too also.
More later................... Susie