After a nearly empty flight where I had full reign of about 30 seats, I landed in Chengdu and high-tailed it to the nearby hotel. With no stalling at check-in, I pulled up the stopwatch on my phone which told me that I had been traveling for 22 hours from my Uber pickup in Portland to the hotel bed at the Chengdu Airport Express… Not too bad. As opposed to the Beijing connecting route, the direct flight from San Francisco cut off about 6 hours. Which is worth it’s weight in gold if you ask me.

No matter what trick you might have up your sleeve, the jet-lag can certainly wreck havoc on your mental capabilities. Although, it doesn’t seem to quite hit you until your second day. You know this to be true because you feel like you drank a bottle of NyQuil and it’s not even noon. The dark circles around your eyes are also a good giveaway in describing your inner sleeping ballerina. I didn’t know I was tired until I met up with Mr. Cheng for a bowl of noodles, when he took the time to translate that I should go home take a nap.

With lots to do before the interns arrive, I managed to make a trip to the grocery store to restock the toilet paper, purchase 10 gallons of water for the dispenser, and sort out some money transfer issues at the bank. The banks are always a hoot, given that I have to rely on my pocket translator to describe what it is that I need. It always concerns me that I might be asking them to give me money in the form of a demand. Sort of like a 1900’s bank robber might hand a teller a note. Thankfully, this hasn’t happened yet.

As I was walking back to the apartment from my inadvertent attempt at knocking off a bank, I was pleasantly surprised to see a much quieter city in comparison to the summertime. Now that I have come to Ya’an during every season, I’d have to say that this is my favorite. As I am a fan of cold weather, this temperature is perfectly in my comfort zone. Let’s just remember that the last time I was here it was 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity. I’ll just try to make sure that Meghan is the one who get’s the hot months during her rotations.

Tomorrow I will ramp up the preparations and head up to the panda base with about 50lbs. of laboratory supplies for our freeze drying effort.  This will also give me time to say hello to everyone, sync all of the iPads, upload the maternal care logs, and to check out our new office. Hazy head or not, I’m definitely excited to see how all of the cubs are doing.

Talk to y’all tomorrow-