Travel Blog part 1

Travel Blog!

I have included lots of details about our travels just in case it could be of help to adoptive families who will be traveling soon.   It may be more details than the general reader will want to know.  If so, feel free to blast by them!

We left noon-ish on Friday, April 19 for the Cincinnati airport.  For the record, it was the cleanest and nicest of the airports that we were in.  Our oldest daughter, Sarah, had put breakfast in front of me an hour or so earlier and told me to eat it.  I’m glad I listened.  It was about twelve hours later before I got another meal.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that American Airlines would check our luggage from Cincinnati all the way to Guangzhou for us, and we wouldn’t need to handle it again until we got to China!  And yes, every piece arrived, though we did have a notice in one that it had been opened for inspection, and one suitcase was missing the strap we had put on it before checking it in.

Our first flight out on American Eagle was delayed.  Tikvah was pretty nervous, and visited on the cell phone with big sister Hannah while she waited.  I was very strangely calm about the situation.  I think there must have been a lot of people praying and a LOT of grace extended my way for this coward to get on so well!

    

At last we got off the ground in what I would describe as a little tuna fish can (Tikvah says sardine can) that was a teeny, tiny airplane packed full of people.  I thought I would barf as the pilot swerved and swayed getting us up in the air!  The stewardess came by a little later with a cup of lukewarm, pretty bad coffee, but I was thankful for it.  When we landed in Dallas, Texas we were about an hour behind schedule.  In order to get seats we needed to check in at the gate.  The man at the counter told us to step aside, as he was working on it.  Most of the rest of our layover was spent waiting for seat assignments and boarding passes.  We had figured out by this time that none of us had any lunch, but there wasn’t enough time to do anything about it.  We did manage to buy bottles of water and a little snack from a vending machine.  

Tikvah was feeling more confident for the second flight.  The nice man had gotten us three seats together and WOW I was thankful.  This plane was quite a bit larger than the little regional plane, but the seats were tight together.   This plane didn’t sway as badly so the flight itself wasn’t as scary, but I confess the experience of the first plane combined with the rushing to get our boarding passes had me pretty freaked out by the time we began the second flight.   Again I was offered a cup of lukewarm, bad coffee and I gladly accepted it.  My Mp3 player’s batteries were dead and I couldn’t find the new ones in my bag. The inflight movie wouldn’t work.  I read, but there wasn’t much to distract me!  By the time the second flight arrived in Los Angeles, my legs (and pretty much everything attached to them) ached pretty badly.  I wondered how I would ever be able to endure another fifteen plus hours in the air.

 

It was around 8pm (eleven our time) when we landed in LA.  This time we needed to wait in a REALLY LONG line at the airport for our international flight with China Southern.  I had heard bad reviews of this airline and was pretty concerned about how long we were going to be “guests” with them.  (I was concerned needlessly.) At last we got through the line, got our boarding passes, and went to wait for the flight.

 The only thing near to our departure gate was a little drink and sandwich shop.  We paid a crazy amount for three ham and cheese sandwiches, but it was worth it!

To be continued ... our time on China Southern Airlines