Good morning from Hong Kong! We arrived here at 6:15 am local time Monday morning(3:15pm Sunday PDT). It has been one long travel day, but we’re about to complete the final leg.
We departed Corvallis by bus at 10:30 am PDT on Saturday, June 16. We had a lunch stop in Roseburg, right across the street from a car wash supporting the Roseburg High School Band 🙂 and a dinner stop in Redding, CA. Many students partook of In-n-Out, while others stuck to more traditional fare.
After dinner, we continued on. We even made it about 2/3 of the way through “West Side Story” (the ensemble is playing this on the tour) before the DVD player gave up on us. Finally, about 12 hours after our departure, we made it to the San Francisco airport. Yes, we departed from SFO. There was only one minor hiccup when the percussion stands case was 15 pounds overweight, but some rearranging and shifting to luggage brought everything to acceptable weights. We also met up with our tour agent, Norman Gordon, who led us through check-in, security, and to our gate.
We boarded our Cathay Pacific flight and took off at 1:10 am. It was strange eating dinner about an hour into the flight. I guess they were trying to get us switched over to Hong Kong time. Many of us slept or watched movies and shows on our personal TVs. There was even a plan to put a light show together with the overhead lighting as each person sang their individual parts to a piece of music. Luckily, that never came to fruition. The lights came back on and thery served breakfast – Sunday afternoon for Oregon, but Monday morning on the flight.
Now we are waiting for our connecting flight to Fukuoka. We’ll depart about 11:10 am local time and be in the air for 3 hours. Then we’ll transfer to the hotel and have an evening off. Tomorrow, we’ll meet our first hosts, Iizuka High School. The students will also meet their first home stay families.
Signing off for now. Here are a couple of “on the road” pictures. More will be posted as our tour photographer, Sean Hunter, joins the blog.
Wow. You guys are lucky. I’d love to goto Japan!