Our journey begins

If you look at the bottom of the left side of this picture, you can see Nanning in white. That is where Nathan is.
Our plane to Chicago

I have heard many times that you forget the pain that is associated with labor. Well, it can be said about the airplane ride to China as well. I completely forgot how long (I wish I could figure out a way to really accentuate that word) 15 hours was on a plane. It is long and at times, miserable. You know it is long when the pilot introduces himself, the crew and then lets you know that this is one of the longest plane trips you can take. Thanks. Needed that reminder.

You can’t get comfortable. You can’t sleep. You get hungry, but they don’t always serve food that you are hungry for. I mean really, how can a bowl of ramen noodles fill anyone up?

Our trip started out very chaotic. We had a huge storm blow through and our electric went out Thursday around 3 am. We debated all day about what we were going to do—Do we go to a hotel or take a chance of not having any electric Friday morning? We decided about 4 o’clock to just go ahead and get the hotel. We raced home so that we could finish packing before we lost all of our day light. We had packed a lot Wednesday night, but had done none of the cleaning we wanted to. We had laundry to do and dishes to wash. And we could do none of it. I hate the way we left the house but we truly had no choice.

My stepmom took us to out to eat and to our hotel Thursday night. Friday morning, we took the shuttle to the airport. The flight to Chicago was uneventful, thankfully. O’Hare was very easy to navigate this time. Surprising to us.

We were very lucky with our seating on the plane to Hong Kong. We had the 4 middle seats. It was really nice because Brynn could stretch out between Kevin and me and sleep. She slept for at least 8 hours. Kevin and I didn’t sleep much at all. In fact, I am typing this on the plane and it is 2:35 am Pennsylvania time Saturday February 14. And I am tired. I can’t wait to stretch out on a bed and close my eyes.

We are under 2 hours left of this part of our journey. A meal should be served any time now. Thank goodness. I am starving.

Our next journey is to our hotel in Hong Kong and then to the train station in the morning. We should be in Guangzhou late morning on Sunday. We then catch a plane to Nanning.
Just 2 more nights until we get Nathan. I can’t believe we are this close.