Last Days and (finally!) Arrival

Thursday was our last day in the U.S. Our flight was scheduled to depart early Friday morning. We planned to close up the house that afternoon and spend the night in a hotel near the airport.

Thursday day was, not surprisingly, busy. I had spent the better part of Wednesday night tucking in odd things into all the bags and then carefully weighing them on the bathroom scale. The next day I lugged all the suitcases downstairs and lined them up in the kitchen so I could systematically go through the upstairs rooms and make sure they were all clear.

Mugsy was scheduled to be picked up by the pet service people at around noon. The woman with the pet service was about an hour late because she got lost. Our house is located on West Court. 'West' is the name of the street. Oftentimes, people think 'Court' is the name of the street and that the address is W. Court Street. Which is what happened with the pet lady. She arrived about an hour late. I had just bundled Mugsy into his carrier and got him out the door when I got a call from Eric telling me that someone was coming to see the house. Eric had the van that day and was hoping to get home in time to pick me up so that the people could view the house without me there. It was pouring rain outside so a nice walk around the block was out of the question (the umbrella was carefully packed in one of the suitcases -- springtime is rainy in Shanghai).

I spent a frantic 20 minutes picking up around the house and tossing out the cat litter box before the visiting realtor and client were at the door. We were not expecting them so quickly. I politely excused myself and spent the next 40 minutes in the garage. About 5 minutes after they were finished looking at the house and on their way out, Eric arrived home.

With that out of the way, we walked through the house to make sure we got everything. We met with our realtor later that afternoon to give her our keys and garage door openers. After that, we loaded up the van and headed down to the hotel to spend our last night in the U.S.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at about 7A. The first leg would take us to Chicago and then from Chicago to Shanghai. Mugsy would fly ATL to Amsterdam and then Amsterdam to China.

We checked into our flight bright and early on Friday. Our heaviest bags were at 69 lb (just under the 70 lb max) and the lightest was 50 lb. Atlanta had some rainstorms on Thursday and the midwest had been pounded with snowstorms. Not surprisingly, our flight to Chicago was delayed, which meant that we'd miss our connecting flight to Shanghai and would likely have to wait another night for the next flight out. Fortunately, the woman at the United desk was able to get us onto a flight to San Francisco where we could catch another flight to Shanghai. When we landed in San Francisco, all the people who had to catch a connecting international flight, and there were a lot on that flight, were instructed to go to a particular podium. There, our passports and boarding passes were checked and then we packed onto a shuttle to drive us a few hundred feet to the international terminal. We hurried to our plane and finally were able to take a deep breath and relax. Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, we crossed the International Date Line and the 2nd became the 3rd and Friday melted into Saturday. Night never came on that flight as we were flying continually west . I slept in fits and starts. Eric was able to pass out for much of the flight.

The Pudong airport was much calmer than when we had arrived back in December and the line to move through customs was short (relatively) and moved quickly. We waited a long time at the baggage carousel. We worried that since we had a last minute flight change, that our bags were somewhere in luggage limbo. This past December, Eric had flown to Hong Kong and had encountered the same situation. His flight to Chicago had been delayed and he had been transferred to another carrier (Continental) to Hong Kong. His luggage had been held at the Atlanta airport by the previous carrier (United) instead of being handed over to Continental. I had to drive to the airport, pick up the suitcase at the United office and wheel it 20 feet over to the Continental office in order for the suitcase to be sent to Eric in Hong Kong. I had nightmares of something similar happening to our bags, though we had stayed with the same carrier. My worries were unnecessary as all 5 of our checked bags finally showed up.

Eric's new boss was kind enough to send a driver with a minivan to haul us to our new place. Finally, we were home. Needless to say, we slept soundly that night.