May 11 -- After a day of complete chaos, we have finally made it to Hong Kong. I can’t believe that we are here. It has taken over two years to get here and we started with a six to nine month wait.
The day started early and rushed to get everything done. Even getting started early only got us to the airport on time, or so we thought. Due to some delays at Newark and President Bush’s visit to Pittsburgh, our flight was delayed and hour and a half. That was our entire layover at Newark. When we landed, we had to hoof it across the airport to our departure gate for our flight to Hong Kong. We were very lucky and made it with five minutes to spare. I think we made it in record time. Thank goodness that I have been training for this.
The flight was long, just over fifteen hours. It was pretty cramped and crowded but we made the best of it by watching movies and sleeping. Our muscles are tired and sore after that trip so we are eating Aleve by the handfuls.
We traveled in a 777 Boeing. It was huge, but not the biggest of the fleet. The take-offs and landings are a lot better in a bigger plane. I didn’t do as much screaming or crying as I intended to do. I think Don was relieved, I know he hates it when I do that. Probably all of the distractions and maybe a few drinks lightened the anxiousness a bit. The trip through customs and baggage went well. A lot better than it does in the U.S. I hope that I didn’t just jinx us for the next trip! We were pleasantly surprised to see that our luggage made it too, even with our rushed boarding of the flight. Whew, now I can relax a little and brush my teeth.
According to our itinerary, we are supposed to do a bit of sightseeing in the early morning. (6:30am early) and then we are catching a bus to Guangzhou. We are then getting a flight to Nanchang, Jiangxi where Samantha is from. We will spend the next nine days there.
We are scheduled to meet Samantha on Monday, but some of the people in the group are talking that it might be tomorrow. We will just have to wait and see.
Thank you every one for your well wishes and words or encouragement. We hope that we can keep adding to the site so that you can follow our progress.
Here are a few pictures, sorry about the quality, as we were rushed.
Till tomorrow,
Karen, Don and Samantha
May 12 --
We arrived late into Hong Kong, so we lost a Saturday somewhere in the mix. We are gonna catch up by posting next on May 13th. So go click on the 13th. We also apologize for not posting, we had some internet issues!
