Fortunately, I woke up an hour before our alarm was supposed to go off early Friday morning to check the flight status. Due to severe weather across the country I knew a lot of flights were being canceled or delayed. My heart sank as I read online that our flight from Louisville to Chicago was cancelled. It was a little after 4am at this point and I quickly called United to get on another flight out of Louisville so we could make our long flight from Chicago to Beijing that left at noon. When I finally got past all of the stupid voice prompts and was connected to an agent the recording said there was a 55 minute wait to talk to a person! We started to panic. If there was not another flight out of Louisville soon we decided we would attempt to drive to Chicago. If we had to wait 55 minutes to find out if there was an available flight we would not have enough time to make the drive to Chicago. I quickly searched the internet and found an American Airlines flight that left Louisville in a few hours and would have us in Chicago on time for our connecting flight and it appeared that it was on time and not canceled as the majority of flights seemed to be. Now the problem was I wanted United to get us on the flight so we didn't have to pay for additional tickets, although I was ready to pay if that is what it came to. We decided our best bet was to head to the airport ASAP so we could get it taken care of there. I managed to eventually get through with American Airlines and get two seats reserved. On our other phone we were still waiting to be connected with United. After about 40 minutes they finally answered. I explained the situation and asked them to book the American flight for me. She put me on hold and I was disconnected! I might have started to cry at this point. I can't remember. By now we had the car loaded and headed out to the airport. Thanks to my dad who was woken up by my frantic phone call around 4:30am and got us to the airport a little after 5am. We owe you one Pops!
At the airport we were booked on the American flight no questions asked and the plane was there and scheduled to leave on time. Our flight to Chicago was uneventful and we were there with plenty of time to spare. We had a very long walk from our arrival gate to our departure gate which was a nice bit of exercise before our very long flight (we walked so far we passed 7 Starbucks in the Chicago airport). We of course were distracted by a giant, life-size brontosaurus skeleton and walked about 15 minutes down the wrong concourse. When we finally got to our gate we met another family, the Rentmeesters, who we knew through our Facebook adoption group that were on our same flight. Dawn Rentmeester, Aaron and I decided we deserved a Bloody Mary to cheers to our journey at the airport bar. They were very spicy!
The flight was not fun. We struggled. I really struggled! About 8 hours in I was totally ready to be done and we still had another 6-7 hours. The food was not good so we were hungry and I started getting very nauseous. I was so tired and tried to sleep but every time I dosed off I woke myself back up. Despite my eye mask, comfy neck pillow and relaxing music, we both were unable to sleep. Aaron never fell asleep and I may have slept for a total of 30 minutes. We watched lots of movies and found a few interesting people to talk to at the back of the plane while stretching and using the bathroom. I am not looking forward to doing that again in a couple of weeks with a baby on my lap the entire 15+ hours.
We finally made it to Beijing around 4:00pm their time (3:00am Louisville time-been awake about 24 hours at this point). We exited the plane and headed towards the immigration line. I wish I could explain the immigration line in the Beijing airport. It was just a swarm of hundreds (maybe thousands) of people with no formal lines formed to the multiple counters. You just jumped into the massive crowd and pushed your way toward the counter where lines sort of formed. There were no ropes organizing it, it was just a free for all. We eventually made it through and boarded the train to the other terminal. We got off the train and decided were were in the wrong place. We talked two airport employees (they spoke no English, we spoke no Chinese so you can only imagine how that went) into letting us back on the train to go back where we thought we needed to go. We headed toward our next gate to catch our next flight and after navigating there for about 20 minutes we found out we were in the wrong place and needed to go back where the train originally dropped us off to get our boarding passes for our next flight. It took about 45 minutes to finally figure out where we needed to be. The airport is very confusing and hard to get around. You have to take a train among the terminal but if you have a connecting flight it is very involved. We finally figured out we needed to go claim our luggage, have our luggage x-rayed, go to the ticket counter, have new boarding passes printed, recheck our luggage (thankfully under the 44 lb. limit) and then go through security again. We walked through the x-ray scanner, put our carry on through and their received a thorough wanding and pat down. They left no parts unchecked! Then what I dreaded this whole time may happen, happened. Our carryon with A LOT of medication was flagged and opened. They had to check all of the liquid medication. Fortunately she only made us open a handful of bottles and left some still sealed. I probably had 15 different liquid medications/creams and they let them all through. I was scared to death they would confiscate something I would need. By the way, the trashcan next to the bag check point was smoking. Aaron made me walk far away in case of explosion. They security guards didn't seem too concerned so i guess it was not a major threat. After weaving through a long maze of escalators, elevators, hallways, and a bus ride, we finally made it to our gate. Let me mention we were so hungry and thirsty through this 3 hour process but had no water, and no Chinese money to buy any. Bottled water is also very hard to find in the airport. They do not have a lot of newsstand/convenience stores like we have in our airports. We finally found a Starbucks down a long, dark, deserted terminal that was open and took credit cards! I was overjoyed! They also had sandwiches. I ordered a turkey sandwich and a bottle of water and we headed toward our gate. I sat down and scarfed down half of my sandwich before thinking about the lettuce and tomato on it. We are not supposed to eat fresh fruits and veggies that have been washed in the water. I panicked and threw away the rest of that delicious sandwich. I think I cried again at this point. (I haven't gotten sick yet so hopefully I am in the clear.) We boarded our flight to Taiyuan at 7:30 pm Beijing time (6:30 am Louisville time and still had not eaten or slept). We were the only Americans on the flight and have not seen another American (or anyone non-Chinese) since arriving in Taiyuan 13 hours ago.
After an hour flight we arrived in Taiyuan and were greeted by our lovely guide Maggie. We got our bags and took a van ride to the hotel about 20 minutes from the airport. Maggie walked us in and got us checked in and settled in our room. It is good she helped check us in because very few people at the hotel speak English and the 2-3 people who do, aren't fluent. The hotel is very nice, our room is lovely, but it is very hot. Our room was 80 degrees last night when we walked in. The thermostat doesn't seem to work, but after about an hour we discovered our windows open. (You wouldn't find that on the sixteenth floor in the US). We were starving and decided we would eat and then go to bed (we had been up about 30 hours at this point). We decided room service was the way too go and it was very reasonably priced. We tried to call for room service but couldn't figure out what number to call. We tried several and couldn't get any one who spoke English so we decided we would have better luck if walked down to the front desk. We eventually were able to play Charades with the desk staff and they knew what we were looking for. I don't think that people in this hotel do room service. They were so confused about us wanting to eat in our room and not sitting down in the restaurant. We ordered a couple of dishes that involved noodles and rice but didn't know exactly what we had ordered. They brought the food to our room a bit later and the guy who delivered it wanted us to pay for it. We only had US cash and credit cards and he wouldn't accept either. We asked to charge it to the room but they couldn't do that either. He left very confused and a few minutes later we got a phone call from the woman at the front desk who sort of speaks English. She told Aaron we needed to exchange money in the morning and then go to the hotel restaurant to "right our wrong". We were ashamed of ourselves but enjoyed our dinner none the less. The fried rice had shrimp and ham in it but was surprisingly good and the noodles had chicken and were very good! We had one bottle of water each that the hotel provided in the room and drank it sparingly with dinner so it would last us the night (and for brushing our teeth). We took showers and went to bed around midnight.
We slept a solid 8 hours and awoke feeling great. We called home and checked in, watched an episode of Breaking Bad on the computer and then leisurely made our way to breakfast. We walked in to the elaborate breakfast buffet and were told is ended at 10am. It was 10:20 at this point. I was not happy about missing this buffet which I have heard so much about but was more concerned with how thirsty we both were. We had our one bottle of water last night but were really dehydrated and thirsty by this time. We were counting on more bottled water at breakfast. We decided we would venture out of the hotel to exchange money and go in search of water. The front desk staff pointed us in the direction of the bank across the street and down several blocks where we needed to go. We headed out and began a game of Frogger dodging car, trucks, bikes, and motor scooters across 8 lanes of fast moving traffic. The Chinese just run across and stand in the road as cars zoom past them. I am not talking the center median, they stand in the middle of the four lanes on the dotted lines and cars merge and zoom around them. We eventually ran across and walked into the bank only to find out we needed our passports to exchange money. We headed back to the hotel across 8 lanes of traffic to get our passports. We eventually made it back over to the bank and spent about 30 minutes while we attempted to fill out papers and exchange money. I was getting nauseous again and had to sit down while Aaron and the bank teller tried to exchange money with very little verbal communication. We didn't realize how few people who speak English or what a challenge it would be to find food and water. We joked that were were on a survivor reality show trying to find food and water in the wilderness. I have never felt so lost and helpless when all we wanted was clean water and anything to eat. This experience made me realize how fortunate we are to have clean drinking water and food so accessible when a lot of the world does not. We finally got some Chinese money after a careful examination of Aaron's passport and visa (several bank staff probably examined it for 15 minutes). We asked the man at the bank where we could buy water and he didn't understand. We passed several shops on our walk to the bank and knew where to buy used tires or a mop and bucket but didn't see any convenience stores. He though we wanted a glass of water and sent the bank security guard to the back to bring us a cup of water. Thank you sir but that is not what we wanted. He finally figured out we wanted to buy water and told us 15 meters down the street. I have never been as happy then when we finally found bottled water. We bought the biggest ones they had and left with huge smiles on our faces. We walked around a bit and found a small grocery store and headed in to check it out. An old man saw us carrying our giant water bottles and wouldn't let us in the store with them. We were quickly shooed out the door. We were clearly not giving them up and left but plan to head back there later to check it out. Back in the room we laughed about our struggle to survive and enjoyed a bag of nuts and a protein bar. Thank goodness I packed a few snacks. We are thinking of venturing out in search of lunch soon and then meet our guide to go to Walmart at 3pm to get diapers, etc. You better believe we will be stockpiling bottled water from Walmart. That should be another exciting adventure which I will blog about later.
On a side note, Aaron is watching TV right now. We only have one station with English sub titles so he is watching a very interesting special on dams.
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