Deja vu (all over again)

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*Note I started this on the way back from China but didn't get to finish until Friday morning.

Sorry, I know that's an old cliché but it just seemed to fit leaving China. First time leaving Guangzhou back in 2004 we were delayed over 2 hours and missed our connecting flight to San Francisco. This time, guess what....delayed almost about 2 hours again but we did make our connecting flights out of Beijing.

There was some kind of problem with loading the cargo, don't think it had anything to do with the passenger baggage since they had several skids of large crates they were loading when we boarded. It's funny, sometimes even though you don't speak the language you can figure out bad news. The flight attendant came over the speaker, said something in Chinese and the everyone on the plane let out a load moan. That was after the first hour's delay. We did have to do the terminal dash again though once we got to Beijing, which included going through immigration.

Not to be out done we had to do the made dash in San Francisco because of the time it took to get through US immigration. I think connecting flights is one of those things you can't win on. If you book with 4 or 5 hours layover, everything will be on time, we had 3 to 2 ½ hours layover and it's been down to the wire on every connection going and coming.

But here we are back in the states. Yippie!! I'm writing this on the flight to Charlotte, without internet so it'll be over and done with by the time I can post this. Hopefully we'll be able to land there and in Lynchburg since I see T-storms are in the forecast for there tonight.

Flight from China went OK, Lilly was a perfect child, hard to believe a 7-year old could set that long without any problems. She did sleep quite a bit. As I look around all the girls are out so hopefully someone in this family is getting some rest cause I know dad sure hasn't gotten enough sleep.

Jasmine and Rose both cried for a bit about leaving China. I expected it from Rose, she knew today was the day and you could tell it was weighing on her but Jasmine kind of took me by surprise. I know she had gotten close to both Jocelyn and Kathy (hard not to) but I think there was more to it then that. Of course she might be thinking we can all just keep living out of a hotel room and go sight-seeing everyday. I wonder if seeing some many people that looked like her might have been part of why she was having a problem leaving. There weren't many westerners any where in Guangzhou, even less in Nanchang. Quite a change from being at home were she doesn't get to see many Asian people. I know it was a quite a bit different for me & Jenny being the only westerners around.

It's now Friday morning, way to early for me to be up but it's going to take a while for my internal clock to get back in sync with east coast time.

We arrived in Charlotte behind schedule, of course goes without saying, and had to make the mad run from terminal B to terminal E, all the way from and to the ends of both terminals but we made it on the Lynchburg plane and there wasn't any thunder storms that kept us from flying so we arrived at Lynchburg about 11:30 PM, right on schedule. We did come up 2 bags short after they unloaded the luggage but a very helpful lady that worked for US Air found out they bags were still in Charlotte and had already been scheduled to be on the first flight Thursday morning. Knowing what those bags went though I was just happy they all didn't get sent to England, Alaska or some other far away place.

The girls sure seemed to be glad we didn't have to get back on another plane, so was mom and dad for that matter. They were excited to meet grandma and grandpa. Rose took my dads hand and walked with him through the terminal.

They were really excited once we got home and realized this was were we had been telling them about over the last couple of weeks. Jenny fixed them a bite to eat and believe it or not all 3 girls went straight to bed and right off to sleep. After all the sleeping they did in flight I figured it was going to be hard to get them asleep.

So that's our trip back, the girls handled the long flight very well. Everyones's settling in fine and all our luggage arrived safe and sound. So glad to be back home!

PS. Sure is great to be able to see the sunshine again to!

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