Hey everybody! I know I am long overdue with my updates. You all know we made it safely, but here are a few highlights from our journey:
* Several days In NYC with our dear friends. We stayed in their house in Brooklyn, with their family of 6, and enjoyed getting to know their extended family and friends there. What a blast! We were pretty thankful to be homeless and "have" to visit them ;) I even got to take one of their daughters and Chloe to the Statue of Liberty. Tickets to go up were sold out a month in advance... but a park ranger let us go up anyway! We had lots of fun times in our short visit.
* We met some of our best friends from home in DC for a few days while waiting for our flight. I was pretty maxed out on the stress level by then, as we had ALL of our things crammed into the car and had been living out of suitcases for nearly two weeks. We were thankful for the unseasonably warm weather, and we were able to see plenty of sights on the National Mall. I even took Chloe to see the Supreme Court in session, and once again we were blessed when a tour guide gave us some extra tickets to head up in the Washington Monument. We certainly had a great "farewell America" tour!
* After lots of tears and hugs, we camped out at the airport with all of our things. Our friends, who were kind enough to drive our car back home, had to get going early... and we had a lot of bags to check! The girls were excited. Emma enjoyed learning about how planes work... though she wasn't quite as interested after our a couple of flights :) We had a long day in the airport, then flew DC to New York and boarded our 22 hour flight (we had a stopover a few hours in and had to haul three sleeping girls and ALL of our carryons off the plane to wait in a little holding area). Then we had two more legs in country.
* If we hadn't been SO exhausted, the reception would have been a lot more funny. (Also, we had already had to pay for our luggage on two legs and they made us fork over a pretty considerable amount again in country, even though we were theoretically only supposed to pay once... that was pretty disheartening) The flights from HK on were GORGEOUS, through mountains and mist... Before the last flight I had to manage all of our luggage and all three very tired, very frustrated girls while Matt had the experience of being led by an airport security guard to an ATM... and then trying to navigate the ATM in another language, all while worrying whether we'd actually make our last flight!
* There are no benches or seats, so the girls and I tucked away in a corner, trying to stay out of everyone's way. This, of course, didn't work, because half the people were trying to get to us! I don't know how many people took their pictures with Laney. Emma was crying (mostly because she was so exhausted she was delirious) about the bug bites she had gotten on the previous flight. Before I knew it, I looked over to see one of their admirers whip out a vile of who-knows-what and deftly apply it to Emma's broken skin! (I mean, who does that???)
* Several days In NYC with our dear friends. We stayed in their house in Brooklyn, with their family of 6, and enjoyed getting to know their extended family and friends there. What a blast! We were pretty thankful to be homeless and "have" to visit them ;) I even got to take one of their daughters and Chloe to the Statue of Liberty. Tickets to go up were sold out a month in advance... but a park ranger let us go up anyway! We had lots of fun times in our short visit.
* We met some of our best friends from home in DC for a few days while waiting for our flight. I was pretty maxed out on the stress level by then, as we had ALL of our things crammed into the car and had been living out of suitcases for nearly two weeks. We were thankful for the unseasonably warm weather, and we were able to see plenty of sights on the National Mall. I even took Chloe to see the Supreme Court in session, and once again we were blessed when a tour guide gave us some extra tickets to head up in the Washington Monument. We certainly had a great "farewell America" tour!
* After lots of tears and hugs, we camped out at the airport with all of our things. Our friends, who were kind enough to drive our car back home, had to get going early... and we had a lot of bags to check! The girls were excited. Emma enjoyed learning about how planes work... though she wasn't quite as interested after our a couple of flights :) We had a long day in the airport, then flew DC to New York and boarded our 22 hour flight (we had a stopover a few hours in and had to haul three sleeping girls and ALL of our carryons off the plane to wait in a little holding area). Then we had two more legs in country.
* If we hadn't been SO exhausted, the reception would have been a lot more funny. (Also, we had already had to pay for our luggage on two legs and they made us fork over a pretty considerable amount again in country, even though we were theoretically only supposed to pay once... that was pretty disheartening) The flights from HK on were GORGEOUS, through mountains and mist... Before the last flight I had to manage all of our luggage and all three very tired, very frustrated girls while Matt had the experience of being led by an airport security guard to an ATM... and then trying to navigate the ATM in another language, all while worrying whether we'd actually make our last flight!
* There are no benches or seats, so the girls and I tucked away in a corner, trying to stay out of everyone's way. This, of course, didn't work, because half the people were trying to get to us! I don't know how many people took their pictures with Laney. Emma was crying (mostly because she was so exhausted she was delirious) about the bug bites she had gotten on the previous flight. Before I knew it, I looked over to see one of their admirers whip out a vile of who-knows-what and deftly apply it to Emma's broken skin! (I mean, who does that???)
Sweet lady, but the whole thing was pretty surreal. It seemed to pacify Emma. Then the woman took her turn getting a portrait with the motley Price clan, insisted we keep the potion, and ran to catch her flight! Not to worry... the excitment didn't level off. All of the girls had to potty, so I force marched them through the mass of humanity (again, most of them touching and grabbing the girls), including many young people in full ethnic minority costume who apparently are payed just to collect carts and look pretty. We made it through the frey (no small feat) and across the airport to the bathroom, hauled all of our stuff in with everyone staring at us, and I proceeded to hold them all up on the squatty -- while divying out what little TP I had in my purse and balancing everyone's sweatshirts/blankets/stuffed animals and trying to keep one eye on our stack'o'luggage. What a circus! Emma peed on her sweatsuit. Laney just plain couldn't walk straight by this point. And I was afraid Matt would return from the ATM and wonder where we'd gone. In the end, we made it. Chloe threw up on the last flight (and she didn't even have that delicious seafood breakfast!), but we all breathed a sigh of relief when we stepped out of the airport and finally got all of our things into the taxi for the hour ride to our city. We were happy to be here. Jet lag hardly affected us, since we were so exhuasted we slept like rocks that night. And we had a WHOLE lot more excitement ahead of us. But lets just say no one wanted to travel for a while!
2 comments:
Oh Erin - wow! I just love that you are able to update us like this - can't wait to see pictures of where you're living and more on your crazy new life - we will be praying for you - please let us know of specific things. We love you guys!
Sounds like 6 months on the slow boat to China may have been easier! I can relate, our trip here was a little smoother, but still taxing!
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