May 19th, the 36 hour day.
At 4:30 AM our phone rang with our wakeup call (scheduled by Chen, bless her!)
We were half-dozing when it went off. Well, Jenn and Ben were half-dozing, Bella was out cold.
We had spent most of the past night, from 6pm until about 11pm packing. (Bella slept through most of that too!) We were pretty much ready to go!
We trucked our luggage, ourselves and our sleepy daughter down to the 1st floor lobby to meet Chen and the bus. We got a bit of a bagged breakfast, which we must have eaten although neither of us remember anything about it. Then we found ourselves on a bus and heading to the airport.
We had a bit of a wait at the airport when suddenly Chen was handing us our tickets and saying goodbye! Two weeks gone in a flash. There were tears all around and we hugged Chen goodbye, boarded our plane to Hong Kong and were off. We spent about 45 minutes in the air to Hong Kong, got off of our plane and were suddenly alone (well, alone with our travel group) in a vast and deserted airport.
It's a big airport. We wandered for about three miles and eventually bumped into someone who helped us find our terminal and we still had about 40 minutes before boarding.
Once we were on the plane and on our way we had 14 and a half hours to kill! Bella, Jenn and Ben were taking up two seats in a three seat row and thankfully the third seat was taken by a businessman with a young daughter himself.
Bella did great on the flight. She slept for about 8 hours, mostly in one go! She was also entertained by various toys we brought with us and by the people around her. We spent some time in the back of the plane with other travel mates and their children just hanging about. It was a looooong flight, but doable. We kept telling ourselves "it's just one day!"
And what a day. 14 and a half hours later we arrived in Chicago just an hour after we had left Hong Kong! Bella was a US citizen! We went through customs and immigration (which took about an hour and a half) and then boarded the plane for Boston.
It was a two and a half hour flight, and we don't remember much about it.
When we arrived at Logan, we were greeted by a bunch of our family! It was so nice to be home! We had warned everyone that Bella may not want to be held, touched, poked or prodded. So of course, she immediately held up her arms to her Uncle and was then happy to say hello to everyone. It was the most we'd seen her smile yet!
After thirty minutes at the airport and getting our luggage, we made the forty minute drive home, got into our apartment, said goodbye to Jenn's parents and spent some time introducing Bella to her new home.
What an amazing journey!
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