The Journey to Dandong

The trip to Dandong started later than we expected on Wednesday. We finally arrived in Dalian from Beijing late on Tuesday night. Our flight was cancelled so we were practically jogging through the Beijing Capital Airport to catch a flight to Dalian that had been delayed. The only problem was a big problem. We were missing 22 pieces of luggage. Everyone on the trip brought a personal suitcase and a suitcase filled with supplies. We finally got to our rooms around 1:30 AM on Wednesday morning with just our carryon bags. We had been traveling up to that point for 29 hours.


We received a call the next morning that the luggage had arrived. Around 11:30 AM Ralph, myself and three people from the hotel travel to Dalian airport to pick up our luggage. When we arrived back at the hotel we had around 45 minutes to pack our personal overnight bags and get our supplies of books and candy pouches ready for the school in Dandong.

The hotel took us in their bus to the bus station for our trip to Dandong. (We are not talking Greyhound here.) It was quite an experience. When we arrived in Dandong it was at night and there were people all over with signs and the were yelling out at people and trying to pull at arms of the passengers. There were trying to get the bus passengers to stay at their hotels. Needless to say Molly did not like that. (I believe that the trip to Dandong made her realize at how blessed she is to have a family that loves her and that she is living in America.)

We checked into a nice hotel right across from the bridge that leads into North Korea. It was total darkness on the North Korean side of the river. After we checked in we went out to have a "Korean BBQ with the principal of the school. The former principal was there also. The food was delicious and we enjoyed ourselves. We had a debriefing meeting for the evening and went to bed. Will blog more later.