Continuing the Journey

Molly's Homecoming (The Start of a Long Story)...

We woke up early on Friday in Guangzhou, got to breakfast on time, ate quickly (with no crowds at the White Swan buffet at 6AM, that was very easy), turned in our room keys, and left for the airport with Jason at 7:50AM on the dot.

When we were checking in at the Guangzhou Airport to get our boarding passes, we started to get a bit nervous. The lady at the ticket counter had a bit of an issue with the fact that we had such a short layover (1 hour, 25 minutes) in Tokyo before heading to the U.S. Really? Sue Sorrels booked our flights and said a short layover in Tokyo was a non-issue...that "no one has ever missed their flight in Tokyo." In fact, the ticket counter lady had SUCH an issue with our short layover that we had to sign a waiver that if we missed our connecting flight in Tokyo, China Southern was not going to be held liable for it.

Uh-oh.

We tried to just not talk about it. I had purchased trip insurance and had Sue Sorrels' assurance about Tokyo's efficient system. Still, in my gut (and probably in Daddy's, too) there was an eerie feeling something was going to go wrong.

The flight from Guangzhou to Tokyo was perfect. Molly slept for half of the three-hour flight, ate well (lunch looked disgusting and Daddy and I chose to pass, but Molly licked her plate clean!), and laughed and goofed with us when she was awake. So far, so good...

We got off the plane in Tokyo and a lovely airport employee met us at the gate to take us directly to the connecting gate. We started to feel a bit better. As we trotted behind this lovely airport employee through a fairly empty airport, we were SURE things were going to go smoothly.

We were VERY wrong.

We arrived at the gate to be told that we -- our family, two American businessmen, and a young Chinese woman trying to get back to the U.S. for college and not wanting to miss her host mom's birthday on Saturday -- were late for the flight (which wasn't leaving for 40 minutes). We were also told that they didn't know we were coming (which is a lie, since the aforementioned lovely airport employee had been sent with a list of our names to bring us to that gate), and that they had sold our seats. My heart sank! Daddy and the businessmen (who all clearly travel by air frequently) went a bit ballistic. I reminded Daddy that Molly was watching and we didn't want her upset, so he tried to calm down as we watched the crazier and angrier of the two businessmen totally chew out anyone in the vicinity of the airplane.

I stepped over to the lovely airport employee and asked her what we needed to do next. She said this exact flight only goes out of Tokyo every other day, so we would have to wait until Sunday. WHAT?!?! When I told her that wasn't an option, that we needed to get home, she promised me they would work something out on another airline (at no expense to us) to get us home that evening.

After waiting at the gate for a little less than an hour, we were escorted back to our starting spot in a different terminal and asked to take a seat. Uh-oh..."take a seat" makes it sound like we might be waiting a while.
Daddy was a little less than thrilled, but Molly truly tried to make the most of it...
...as she goofed around, laughed her hearty three-pack-a-day-smoker laugh, and kept us all in stitches. The young Chinese woman interpreted some of what Molly was saying during our wait and told us she thought Molly was just adorable. (Well, duh!) I thought this young Chinese woman was adorable and asked her if she cared if I took her photo with Molly...
...and they were both glad to pose for me. Between Molly and this young woman (whose name I never did learn), I found the wait to not only be bearable, but enjoyable!

Anyway, we were told that we were placed on an American Airlines flight through Chicago (instead of our original Northwest flight through Minneapolis) -- and we were actually going to arrive at our home airport 30 minutes earlier than originally scheduled! We were not able to get seats together, but we were NOT complaining. So Daddy and Molly sat in row 23 in the middle section of the plane and I was in row 31, in the back section of the plane.

Molly was, again, a perfect travel mate and was a total angel during the 10 hour flight. I was a bit lonely back in the rear section of the plane, sitting next to a sullen teenaged girl who literally said NOTHING during the entire flight, but I was heading home and did not care!

As Molly stepped onto American soil...well, American carpet, actually...she automatically became a U.S. citizen. Mommy and Daddy were pretty excited to be back in the good ole U.S.A. with our new little citizen...
...and I think Molly was happy, too! (Not sure why she's holding up three fingers on both hands in that pic. She used to do the "peace" sign, but now thinks this is funnier.)

When we arrived in Chicago and got our boarding passes settled for the last leg of our flight, I thought I should try to check a few phone messages, since I was sure they were piling up while we were gone...
...and Little Miss Silly decided to get out her pink toy cell phone and mock me! You know what, girlie, you can mock me all you want because you have endured a horrible day of traveling without so much as a whimper of complaint.

We boarded our flight home and were so relieved to finally land at our home airport.

NEXT: The airport homecoming and our first night with the whole family under the same roof!