The Adventure Begins

We were sitting at our gate at LAX, waiting to board our flight to Shanghai. I was already starting to feel a little nervous seeing that we were the only non-Asians at the gate. As bad as I wanted to go to China, I was a little apprehensive to say goodbye to America so fast. Especially when I knew there was no one waiting on the other side to help us get to our hotel. As we're sitting there, I hear a lady screaming. My stomach churns; any time there is any kind of yelling or upheaval in a public place, I kind of freak out a little. The screaming got louder and louder - Mark and I and everyone else at the gate stopped and craned our necks to look toward the direction of the screaming as it approached. As the scene came into our view, all us strangers looked at each other and smiled with relief when we saw it was just a very inebriated woman, screaming something about her shoes, punctuated with expletives, of course, and being escorted out by three security guards. Mark looked at me and said, "Well, we are in LAX."

Shortly after, we boarded the plane and were one of the last ones on. Again, I hear yelling. I ignored it at first because sometimes regular Chinese talking sounds like angry yelling to me. But then curiosity, okay nosiness, got the best of me. I turned around and saw 3 people yelling at each other in Chinese, one Chinese stewardess having no luck calming them down, and one American stewardess yelling ineffectively in English for everyone to sit down and calm down. I tried to make out what everyone was saying, but I could only deduce it had something to do with an overhead bin as every time someone opened that bin, the yelling grew louder. At one point, they closed it and the angry people sat down. But then it was opened again, a yellow purse removed, and more anger and shouting. A few minutes later the 3 angry people were escorted off the plane while Mark quietly sang to himself "Nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey, goodbye". We then sat on the runway for an hour while Angry People's luggage was removed from the bottom of the plane. What's one more hour tacked on to a 14 hour flight anyway?

We landed safely in Shanghai and got in a taxi and to our hotel with no problems. All our luggage arrived and everything was still there. We crashed and slept from 10pm - 5:30am, which is incredible in terms of jet lag and time change (China is 13 hours ahead of EST).

This morning we awoke famished. We were very excited about the breakfast buffet that was included with our room. Well, us and the entire Chinese Mary Kay convention that is being held here. Seriously, DO NOT try to compete with a bunch of skinny female cosmetics saleswomen for food, you will not win. Somehow they will come out with 2 plates piled high with salad (yes, it was breakfast), eggs, noodles, steamed buns, fruit, and Cocoa Pebbles sprinkled all over the top of that, while you just walk around in daze with your empty plates looking at the empty containers where food once was. Mark and I sat down with no food and made a battle plan, he was going for toast. He dove right into that mass of hungry Mary Kay ladies and came out with 2 pieces of toast, one with peanut butter for me and one with peanut butter and chocolate for him. "Chocolate?" I asked. "Hey, I saw a lady drizzling chocolate over lettuce, so you can't say anything to me." We left after about 30 minutes and barely eating a thing.

Today we will be going to the Shanghai Railway Station and attempt to buy tickets for Sunday to travel to Nanjing where we will get Luyana. We can see the train station from our window which makes us very happy that we don't have to wander around looking for it! As we landed safely in Shanghai, I got unexpectedly emotional as I thought of how close we are to Luyana.  It's weird to think she is just a few cities over, spending one of her last days in the only place she's ever known.

More adventures to come, I'm sure!!!

Waiting in Chicago:

This one is for Little Buddy - this is the BIG plane we flew to China!!