A Mighty Wind

Well, where do I start? Yes, we did start our journey, FINALLY!

You may be aware that a huge wind and dust storm closed DFW and Love Field Airports on Saturday, February 24, our sheduled day of departure. We stood in line from 4 PM until 7 PM but only move about 50 feet! We were hoping that our pal Espo would somehow find a way for us to leave that day for Los Angles. Well, she is a miracle worker but acts of God still illude her!

She did schedule us on the next flight to leave DFW at 7:30 the next morning. We thought we arrived early enough to catch that flight but the line was as long and slower than the day before! At 8:30 we finally checked in. No open flights to LA where we could connect to Hong Kong. So we were redirected through Paris, France! Yes, Craig and I will circumnavigate the globe on this journey! You can never talk to us about jet lag again!

The trip on American Airlines to Paris was okay. We arrived just in time to check in at the Cathay Pacific counter (also huge lines!) only for them to tell us that they were not going to honor our reservations! You see, the man at the AA counter who checked us through, just scratched out the old times and flights numbers and wrote in new ones. He never re-issued the tickets! Well, that's when I finally lost it! I didn't yell or rant, I only sobbed and tried to tell them we were on our way to our daughter. Maybe that helped. Maybe it also helped that our bags were already checked through. Back and forth between the AA counter and the Cathay Pacific counter (thank God they were close!) we were all fixed.

The flight from Charles De Gaulle to Hong Kong started out okay. Craig had his window seat and I had an aisle, but not on the same row. Craig was squished in next to a large French man and his wife, at least I had an empty middle between me and another guy. There were lots of first run movies on the flight. Unfortunately it was also very bumpy! I came down with a bad case of motion sickness and my dinner came back up! I could not keep any liquids down. I could barely sick next to Craig when he ate his breakfast (he finally got out from the Bastiille around 4 AM.

Don't ask us exactly what time it was. The flight from Dallas to France was 9 hours, the flight from France to Hong Kong was 13. At least Craig was able to see Minsk from his window!

We arrived in Hong Kong 24 hours late. We missed our paid half day tour. We checked in to the hotel anyway - at least we could finally shower after 48 hours of travel! We did our own quick mini tour of the famous town. We took the ferry to the island of Hong Kong, took it back to the side our hotel was on and figured out the subway system and found the bird and flower markets. It was a beautiful day in the 70's.

We arrived back at the Hong Kong airport and we are scheduled to board the flight to Xi'an in a few minutes.

Hopefully our run of bad luck is over. Check in at the China Eastern Airlines counter was a breeze; no 3 oz limit in security check in. Craig was interviewed for a local TV news station about the liquid limitations and about how Hong Kong is trying to adopt the stricter travel regulations found in most other big cities.

I was interviewed, too, mostly about my tourism plans while in China. The sweet woman did not understand what adoption meant, so we had to pull out a picture of Sarah and explain why we were taking her home. Finally she got it and was very happy and excited for us!

More soon!

Mikel
5:24 PM
February 27