That's the last time I'll be honest to foreign governments

This is my attempt at memoirs of my China trip- I did not have access to my blog or facebook while I was in China, but I wrote down my experiences. These are some excerpts and other stories.
So I have this wonderful friend in china, who gave me an open invitation to visit her anytime I felt like, so this is the story of my journey through china:D
For some reason there was a freak cold spell in Utah and California during the few days I was home between trips which threw off my body's polarity or something, so to start off my journey, I had a runny nose. The next thing that made my journey complete was a delayed flight leaving SLC which caused us to arrive in LA with only 40 minutes until my next flight left, and I didn't have tickets. Of course the terminal had to be three buildings down from the one I arrived in, and of course the ticket counter had to of closed about 10 minutes before I arrived at it. My favorite line was I am sorry, we cannot help you because we are closed, as there are five employees standing behind the counter sipping coffee. Yeah, I missed my flight, but I was not alone in that, luckily. You know there are two types of people in this world- those who like to help others and those that don't. I met some of both on this journey. There were two other people from my flight who were traveling to china on the same flight I was scheduled with. We made our way back to the united airlines ticket counter and had to beg the custodian to find an attendant to help us, because it was almost 1 AM at this time. She was slightly more helpful than the last, but did not want to take credit for the delay in flight and therefore it was not the airline's responsibility to pay for our housing, food or even flight if we couldn't find another one. At this point I was almost in tears, thinking I would never make it to see my friend, and knowing I couldn't afford a hotel and food and everything for a delayed trip. The mother and daughter I was thrown together through unhappy circumstance were incredibly giving. I asked if I could sleep on the couch in their hotel room if I payed for part of the price. She would only accept a small amount from me. I owe her so much. We were told to come back in the morning to see if there was another flight we could possibly get on sooner. I think we arrived at the hotel, after using the wrong bus and walking the three extra blocks at night, at around 3 am. We woke up, and ran off to the airport at 7:30 am and found that we had seats on a flight at the same time as previously, just a day later... so that meant we had an entire day to spend in LA. The first thought on our minds was sleep. Luckily, the woman at the front desk took pity on us and allowed us to take the room we had payed for, but they had already cleaned until 3 pm. this meant we would be well rested for the long journey ahead of us. Once we woke up at a more decent hour, we had a full day ahead of us to sight see and go shopping. We found a trolley service that would take us to the water front and to several shopping districts.
On the warf, I was approached by the strange old man who said you don't look like you are from around here. Knowing exactly what he meant by that I replied I have been living in Africa over the summer. He got all flustered at that and started spouting off rude comments about the beautiful people of Africa. He was either crazy or just plain rude. luckily, he was slow, so I ditched him pretty quick. I don't think the tales of my shopping in the foreign land of LA are quite interesting, but I can say that the idea of spending a week's worth of ghanaian grocery money on a single meal is appalling to me still.
Aboard the plane, there were no problems except for my runny nose, apparently they like dry cold environments all over the world, not just America. Oh yeah, if you ever want to fly internationally, take Korean air- seriously, they give you socks!!! And the seats go down way far too. i was so comfy :D
Passing through korean security was no problem, they had us fill out a form and then took our temperature. I marked on the form that I had a runny nose, just in case the stewardesses took note of who looked sick, but they didn't seem to mind.
Well I thought that would be the same for china- seriously, I had no other symptoms marked and noone had bothered me entering Korea. but I was wrong.
I think maybe the combination of Africa, practically having dredlocks and a runny nose might have been too much for the poor security officer who read my health claims. Its not that I wanted to cause trouble, or a scene, but I was the only white person on the entire plane, and I probably looked dirty to them. I am pretty sure the security guard almost peed his pants when I handed the paper over. he looked at me and looked down at the paper and then sprinted to the room for a bib. he motioned for me to put it on and then follow him. Seriously I felt like a freak. We went through several hallways, oh I forgot to mention he also was wearing one of the dinky masks. The whole area was blocked off, and marked with the word "Quarantine". We entered this office that looked like an army camp office, except everyone was wearing these white bubble suits with helmets and gloves. i felt like the Alien in E.T. They sat me down and tried to talk to me. there I was trying to explain it wasn't sickness and showing them I was only cold and my nose ran, but they didn't get it. I must have sat there for over an hour. they kept taking my temperature and telling me it is too high. I read what he had writen on the paper and it said 37.1 Celsius. For those of you who don't know... 37.0 is "normal" they would tell me, It is too high, ah you are nervous, we will take it again. That happened at least 3 times. Finally I told them they needed to call my friend and let her know where I was. She came within 5 minutes and helped smooth things over with them. they had 2.5 pages of questions to ask me, each time the answer was NO.
She gave her address and phone number and left with instructions to not let me out of the house for 2 days, and that I must wear the bib/mask thing and report if my temperature increases. Seriously I was almost suffocating from not being able to breath. we walked outside and to her friend's car and when we sat down she said this is stupid and tore it off. I was relieved. Anyways that's the closest call I've ever had with being detained in a foreign country for something really stupid. It was my fault, but with the circumstances it really could have gone any way.