Back in the USA!

So, yes, after many many hours of traveling on Thursday, we made it home. Since my arrival in Memphis, I have spent much of my time trying to get over jetlag and spending time with my friends here. Now, it's getting to be the time to get back to normal life, especially work. I am not looking forward to weeding through hundreds of work emails! :(

I thought I'd share a quick story about our travel back to the U.S., just to fill everyone in on the actual last day of our journey. We left the hotel in Guangzhou around 6 a.m. Thursday (this was 5 p.m. Wednesday for those in Central time, 6 p.m. for Eastern time...weird, huh???) It was the first of many encounters with airport security at the Guangzhou airport. The flight to Hong Kong was very short, only about 30 minutes. I wish I could've seen more of Hong Kong, but it was awfully hazy. I got to see some of the beautiful mountains though.
We had about a 4 hour layover in Hong Kong, so we spent it getting some breakfast and burning off some energy before getting on that loooonnnnnggg flight. We took off from Hong Kong about 12:30 p.m. local time and were headed for a 14 hour journey! The turbulence for most of the first part of the flight was horrible! During much of it was when the flight attendants were trying to serve us our first meal...it made it very hard to eat. It also made it hard to fall into a good sleep. I don't sleep very well in cars or planes anyway, so guess what? I probably caught anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour of sleep the entire trip! Thankfully, the kids were knocked out after taking some Benadryl, so it made the flight a bit more peaceful. During our flight, we got to see the horizon, with the time change...it was beautiful. We also experienced traveling over the International Date Line. Pretty cool stuff! Towards the end of the flight, I had to get up and stretch my legs, much like I did on the way there. Standing at the back of the plane, I ended up meeting a nice girl from Detroit that was a student at Arizona State University and had been studying abroad in Hong Kong since January. It was neat to hear about her experience and opinions on China.
As we landed in Chicago, we only had 2 hours to get thru customs, claim our baggage so that we could re-check it as a domestic flight, make it thru security and get to our gate. Not easy!! When we were waiting on our baggage, we realized that we had left a $300 painting on the plane that Deanna & Michael had bought on the trip. It was in a long narrow box, so that is why it probably got lost in the shuffle of other carry-ons. We were able to track someone down that could get it for us, as the plane was still at the same gate, in preparation for leaving for Atlanta. While we waited and waited for someone, we were getting ancy that we were going to miss our flight. There was another one at 8:15 p.m., but we really wanted to do everything in our power to get home! Not to mention, Cackie was just starting to show signs of a fever and complaining of a sore throat. So, Michael told us to go on and he would meet us at the gate, as he knew that it would take us longer with the kids and the stroller to get thru security.

We had to take many walkways, elevators, and a tram car to get to our terminal and then we saw the dreaded long line to get thru security. We were like "there's no way we're going to make it", so we called my mom to give her the heads up. We still rushed thru security, which is not an easy thing to do at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago...especially with two 3-year-olds, having to take your shoes off, etc. Surprisingly, the kids were extremely cooperative, we got thru it pretty quickly and we ran thru the terminal to our gate, just in time for the last boarding call. Michael wasn't there yet and we were hesitant about getting on the plane without him. We tried to talk to the lady at the gate to see if we could hold the plane a few minutes or at least leave him a note, but she was not helpful at all, and was actually quite rude. So, with Cackie not feeling well and knowing that our luggage was on that flight, we knew we needed to get home. I would have stayed to wait on Michael, but Deanna needed my help with 2 kids. Another time it was good I was there, huh? So, after much debating and frustration from dealing with the lady at the gate, we decided to proceed. We were able to call my mom to try to have Michael paged at the airport. It was even more frustrating because he didn't have a cell phone on him with being out of the country, so paging him was the only way to get a hold of him and let him know what was going on. That finally all got taken care of, and he made it home later that night. Actually, we found out that he ran up to the gate, as they were backing our plane away! If we only had just a few more minutes to spare! At least we're all home, safe & sound now.
The bad part about the flight from Chicago to Memphis was that it lasted about an hour longer than it should have. Just what we needed at that point, more traveling! There was a bad storm in Memphis, so we circled above the city for extra hour before landing. We were supposed to land at 5:35 p.m., but didn't until about 6:15 or so. When we got off the plane and approached the non-secured area, we saw my parents and some of Deanna's & Cackie's friends to greet us with a banner and some balloons! It was so nice to be home and see familiar faces! Especially after the day we had!
We got home, unpacked what we needed to, ate big salads with sweet tea (yumm!) and headed to bed. Of course, because of adjusting to the time change, Cackie & I woke up at 4:30 a.m. I've been resting for the past few days though, so I think I'm pretty much caught back up with my sleep. Now, like I said, I've gotta catch back up with real life. I'll be headed to Nashville for work tomorrow evening and have meetings Wednesday & Thursday. Then, I'll be back at my real home, Knoxville, late Thursday night.
Big thanks go out again to Erica for getting my mail and keeping watch on my house...it really helped a ton and I don't know what I'd do without you!