Fridays Travels

I still need to blog about the Summer Palace and the Hutongs that we did on Thursday.  Maybe tomorrow I can get that done.  My students have a major paper due on Friday, so I'm not sure when I'm going to get all 17 papers graded within the next week as well.  But, today we traveled from Beijing to Guanghzou.  I wrote some while waiting for our flight...

I'm sitting in the airport getting ready to get on our first flight on the journey for Rachel.  She is very excited about the flight, but I'm not sure she really understands what it is going to be like.  I'm nervous for her.  I hope she does fine.  I did not bring dramine for her, so I only hope she does not get sick!!!  She is working on the word search book that I brought to work on.  I'm listening to familiar music for the first time since I got her.  Its very nice to relax a little with it.

 

So, when we got to the airport, all went fine.  We went through security fine.  We found our gate, but were looking for a bathroom when I realized I had forgotten our rolling carryon at security!  Talk about immediate panic!  I'm sure my eyes got very big when I turned to her and said "bag!" while miming the rolling carryon.  I was so focused on making sure that she stayed by me, she got her back pack, I got the laptop back into my back pack, we had our passports & boarding passes.  I don't know HOW I forgot that.  What made me think of it was when we were looking for a bathroom, I was thinking about some of the things we could do on the plane and I was thinking about the "hungry hippos" game I had in the rolling carryon.  I thought "I guess it didn't flag security that I had that in there."  Then I thought, "I'm not pulling the bag.  Rachel is.  Wait, she's not either!  CRAP!"  So we made a MAD dash back to security and it was sitting there waiting to be picked up.  Talk about a sigh of relief.  All of our adoption paperwork is in there.  That could have been catastrophic!  But, we've both had backpacks all week, I wasn't even thinking about the rolling carry on.  But, all is well and safe.  We both really hot running back to security.

 

The flight was full of "surprises". First the bag issue.  This was Rachel's first airplane flight.  When we first got onto the plane, Rachel sat down in the first seat she saw.  I completely took for granted that she would know to look for the numbers.  So, we found our seat toward the back and sate down.  I made sure to have George explain how her ears will pop and the need to chew gum so she would be as prepared as possible.  About 2 hrs into the flight, Rachel told me (after many attempts!) that she was going to throw up.  Seriously, she wrote the Chinese word a number of times.  She looked in the dictionary and tried to help me understand. She even tried to draw a picture.  I was completely oblivious to what she was trying to tell me.  Finally, though, I got it about 20 minutes before landing.  There was a LOT of turbulence on the flight.  I was even a bit queasy, myself from the turbulence.  I flagged down a staff person because there was no bags in the seat pocket.  When I finally got them to understand, they frantically dug around for bags.  Then brought her some warm water (yuck!) and tissues.  She was able to keep it together, though.  We did have to get another cup of hot water, though, before she was able to calm her stomach.  Poor thing.  I felt so bad for her.  When we got to Guangzhou, it was raining.  Yuck.  I sure hope that it doesn't rain the entire time we are here!!!  We ordered some (very expensive) fried rice as room service and found homes for our stuff so we can find everything.  Tomorrow we have the first stage of paperwork here in GZ.  I think we start that at 10am tomorrow. 

It's getting late.  I need to get ready for bed.  Rachel is watching Prince William & Kate's wedding live: a bonus of being on the same (or similar) time zone as England! LOL.