We have been on and off sleeping to catch up. We were completely dysfunctional on Saturday. Emma is having a fabulous time just taking it all in!
The one thing we worried about was the dogs because when we adopted Hope, she had a very hard time getting used to them. As you can see, Emma is doing just fine!! She has already figured out that treats mean the world to them and they will then do what she asked.
Pancakes with my sisters
Lunch at Zoups : )
Some shopping
So we didn’t expect anything less than a seamless trip home. It would only be fitting since our entire trip was successful. Great people, great new friends also adopting, and great kids!
Well, never count those chickens (as they say). We got to the airport in Guangzhou and said goodbye to our awesome guide and facilitator, Jason. We got to the security check point and they say “We cannot let your baby (they call all kids babies) through because her name isn’t right on the boarding pass.” I look at the pass and it is simply missing her middle name. They said in Chinese that the middle name and first name have to be written together. OMG! you must be joking. So, her Chinese name is Xie Xi Wa and the pass said Xie Xi. They wanted it to look like this Xie Xiwa. So, they send us back to the counter to get it fixed. We get to the counter and they say “we cannot fix that because we have no access to it in the computer”. Keep this part in mind for later in the story. So they cross it out and write it in the way they want to see it, then they stamp it with the airline desk stamp to make it official. They take and keep the other two boarding passes for Emma because they say at the next stop they will fix them because they will have access to do so there in Beijing.
We get to Beijing and we are a transfer flight so we go to security and they tell us that we cannot go through security to have the pass fixed at the gate because we only have an eticket not a boarding pass. We explain the above to them. The main security police woman calls United’s desk just to confirm that we are on the plane then we can go through and get it fixed. She comes back after about 10 minutes to say they are not cooperating and she is really mad. She said they told her that at the first check in Guangzhou (above paragraph) that they DELETED ALL OF OUR TICKETS TO GET HOME!!!!!!! We no longer exist! So they send us to the United Airlines desk where I truly thought I was never getting out of China. YES, WE WERE FUMING!
We stood there for 2 hours as they told us “too bad not our fault it was the fault of the other workers in Guangzhou on the first leg” and we cannot get you on a flight at this time. Oh …..really? To make a long story short, after 2 hours and 3 supervisors and a bunch of BS that they couldn’t find us seats on the next flight AND they would not pay for a hotel…. we told them we were not moving until they fixed the issue….. they found us seats on the next flight out.
This was the long flight and we were blessed with the two funniest and awesome flight attendants that anyone could ask for on a trip. US Immigration was great when we landed in DC and the best two words out of their mouths to us were “Welcome Home!”. AND THEN……. we get to United’s gate in DC where United decides that they are cancelling our flight to Harrisburg because there were more people that needed the plane to go to Philly. OMG!
Our luggage was lost then for 2+ hours because no one at Washington -Dulles told United they cancelled the flight so the bags sat there waiting to be loaded on to a plane that was not leaving. Yet at the time, none of the United workers could find these bags. During this time Bob goes to Enterprise to rent a car to drive home. Enterprise says “We dont rent one way anymore”. Tried to get online, but no internet in the bottom level of the airport baggage claim. OMG has now turned into different explicatives! My phone, of course, at that time died. No plugs in baggage claim. After walking to a plug and getting a small charge, I called Cayla at home to get online to rent us a car from any car rental that would go one way.
LONGEST DAY EVER (especially flying back in time which added 12 hours to the day that we had to stay awake to get our hours back in sync with this time zone).
A similar situation happened with me Delta 6+ years ago and I had to drive home from Atlanta. I never flew Delta again. I will never be flying United again either!
The day before our departure we visited the city zoo in Guangzhou. It was large and similar to any other zoo. The main difference is that Emma has not been to a zoo before so the excitement was incredible!
