We checked out from our hotel (the White Swan) today and left for home. The first leg in our return journey was a private shuttle from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, where Lola returned to the Philippines, and we left for San Fran. We flew halfway around the world, and it took less than a day! We left Hong Kong early Saturday morning, and arrived home at about 7 am on Saturday also, even though our total flight time was about fifteen hours. Can anyone guess why? Answer: The International Date Line and about 12 hour’s worth of time change and jet lag. We jumped the pond (the Pacific Ocean) at 12:30 am on Saturday and arrived into San Francisco at 11 pm Friday. Here the immigration officer opened ‘The Brown Envelope’, and Mia became a citizen of the United States of America! From there we took a 4 hour domestic flight to Chicago and then one last hour-long flight to Detroit.(This is really confusing for me, but I am going to talk about arriving home in the next day even though I already talked about Saturday twice, I will elaborate on the second Saturday more in the next day.?
Having a new family member is hard work!
Maria says:
We enjoyed our last breakfast together at the hotel, packed our bags, and said goodbye to the White Swan, Lucy our guide, and China. Here begins our 35 hour journey home: a 4 hour shuttle van ride from Guangzhou to the Hong Kong international airport, a 12 hour flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco (we depart Hong Kong at 12:30 am Saturday morning and arrive in San Francisco at 11:55 pm Friday night!), a two hour layover in San Fran, a 4 hour flight from San Fran to Chicago, a one hour lay over in Chicago before our one hour flight to Detroit, and a one hour drive home from the Detroit airport (thanks to the kind services of our dear friend Don Stupica who offered to pick us up from the airport!)
Mia did fabulously on the plane...much much better than I could have expected. What is even better is that we arrived home to a wonderful, warm greeting from neighborhood and friends: welcome home banners and signs balloons, gift basket of books and toys, a STOCKED REFRIGERATOR! (fruits, vegetables, milk, juice, bread, yogurt, hummus, salad dressing, homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade chili, chicken casserole, greek stew ...WOW!!! (thank you neighbors, Auntie Lynn and Uncle Tom, and the Stupica family! We love you!)
We are so thankful to all of you for your warm wishes, thoughtfulness and prayers. WE FEEL SO BLESSED! We ARE blessed! We have a wonderful, beautiful new daughter and are surrounded by kind, helpful, generous, supportive friends and family.
So...our travel journey (and blog) ends here, but the next phase of our life now begins at we settle into our life here in Sylvania, Ohio....
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