We have finally made it home after 56 hours of travel.
Natalie was a real trooper and was great the whole trip. She was holding up better than the two of us. The first flight was fine. We waited through our six hour layover in Beijing. We boarded our flight for our 14 hour flight home. That is when all of the fun began. Our plane left the gate and then had an engine problem. We had to wait five hours as they tried to fix the plane. They then cancelled the flight and we had to return to the terminal. The airline put us in a hotel an hour from the airport. We were given some food and were told to wait for a call with instructions. They called at 3:00 am to tell us to be ready to go by 7:30 am. When we got to the airport there was no one from Continental to meet us. There was mass confusion as we tried to find out what was going on. We stuck with our new best friend from the flight, Sharon. Sharon is form China but now lives in Houston. She is fluent in both Chinese and English. She helped translate and let us know what was going on. The plane was not fixed so we had to re-book on United Airlines. Our bags were still on the plane from the night before so we had to claim them and go through customs, again. Then we waited for five hours in line to get new flights booked. We finally got a flight to Chicago, then had to back through border patrol and screening. The whole ordeal was a complete mess. We were a little delayed in leaving so we missed our connection to Richmond. We were told they had already booked us on the next flight. This was not true as we went between two terminals and got it all worked out. We did make it home at midnight on Friday. Natalie was great and is doing well with her transition to her new home and her new dog, Barkley.
