Coming home! (June 9, 2004 - Wednesday)

Hard to believe 2 years ago today, we were leaving China. We reversed our flights from the way over - Guangzhou to Shanghai, Shanghai to LAX, LAX to O'Hare, O'Hare to home airport. Well, that was the way it was supposed to work anyway! First flight went fine. We had a longish layover in Shanghai. Poor Ben was so sick by this time (went to the doc when we got home - he had a bronchitis and a sinus infection!). He was feeling nauseated so someone gave him a prescription med for that, totally helped his nausea but wiped him out! He had to sit down in all the lines in Shanghai. So we finally board the plane that will take us to the US.






That flight went pretty well (it's a total blur as I look back). Lindsey was fussy since she had a cold (was much better from the night before at least) and slept fitfully on and off all the way home, as did I. After a long flight, we finally landed on US soil! YEA!!! We were soooooo tired, but happy to be in the good old U.S. of A.

Now the adventure begins!!! When we were getting to our gate at LAX, we heard our flight was delayed 1/2 hour. No problem. But we got on the flight on time. But then we were told, we couldn't take off - planes in Chicago were backed up because of weather problems on the east coast and in the Chicago area. We ended up sitting on the plane for FOUR HOURS as it got hotter and hotter and stuffier in there. By the time we took off, we knew we would miss our flight in Chicago but hoped for the best. We finally got to O'Hare only to find out our flight home was cancelled. So here it is after 10 pm I think, we can't figure out what to do. We were too tired to think straight! There was no one around to help us. They closed the customer service window and told us it would reopen at 3 am. We thought about taking a cab home (a 3.5 hour drive). All the cabs were taken. We went across the street to a hotel, all the rooms taken. So we plop down in the lobby of this nice hotel, feeling like hobos, slap happy, tired, and I just broke down crying. There were 2 businessmen sitting nearby, we got to talking and telling them our story. They said they were having a meeting the next day and had a conference room reserved - if it was okay with the hotel we could crash there for the night. We were all set to do that, but first we found a phone and my MIL called my FIL. He told us Jay's brother and his wife were on their way to pick us up! They were only about an hour away by this time. (When they heard our flight home was cancelled, they immediately set out for Chicago knowing we might need a ride home! GREAT thinking.) We were so relieved (although not too thrilled about having to drive all the way home after all the long flights!). Of course my BIL got lost trying to get out of Chicago and that added about an extra hour to our trip!

So instead of getting into our home airport at 10:10 pm on Wednesday night, we pulled into our driveway at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday morning. But we were HOME.