13 Hours Later in China, With A Little Help From My Friends

Tyler Bosley
University of Louisville

Anyone who has been on a long trip in a car or a plane - anything over 12 hours - would tell you to sleep for as much of the trip as you possibly can. Doing this helps with jet lag, shortens the trip, and prepares you for the numerous duties that follow once you get to your destination (i.e., handling your bags, customs, and more travel from the airport to your final destination). Of course, it is common sense that the best way to shorten a long plane ride is to sleep. Our journey from Chicago to Shanghai was a little over 13 hours long, and I slept for exactly none of it.

Do not ask me why I couldn't fall asleep - I may never know - but I did make it through the flight with a little help from my friends. By friends, I mean the actors in the four television shows and six movies I watched and the two books that I read on that never-ending flight. I started my journey with Friends (2 episodes), then moved on to How I Met You Mother (2 episodes), got my Zooey Deschanel fix with New Girl, then switched a laundry list of movies. Sherlock Holmes, Young Adult, What's Your Number, Fool's Gold, In Time, and Crazy, Stupid, Love were all on the playlist. I then finished off the ride with an episode of Happy Endings, which I felt was fitting. I also dove into, but did not finish, Siddharta by Herman Hess and Anthem by Ayn Rand. Even reading couldn't put me to sleep.

For more than 13 hours I sat and stared at the little television in the headrest in front of me. I ate the terrible airplane meals, which consisted of penne and meatballs for lunch and lo mein for dinner. I followed the digital travel tracker that they had for us on the monitor that showed us flying over Canada, above Alaska, over Siberia, and down to China. Our altitude reached heights over 38,000 feet. The outside air temperature got as cold as -81F. It was amazing to think that I traveled that far and I was awake for all of it.

As traumatizing as the trip might have been, I can sit here and look out my window at Shanghai and know that it was worth it. After arriving, we cleaned ourselves up and had the best dinner I've had in a long time. After, some of us explored and caught up on each other's lives, which are so hectic in the United States that we rarely ever have a chance to sit down and talk. It could not have been a better first night. Roughly 29 hours after I woke up and headed to the airport in Louisville, I finally fell asleep in China.

Tyler Bosley, from Independence, Ky., is a senior McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville and is currently studying in the People's Republic of China. He is majoring in psychology and biology with a minor in political science.