Sunday, October 13, 2002

Sunday was a beautiful day, so several of our CCAI group decided to take a walk in the park near our hotel. It was beautifully landscaped. In the amphitheater, there was a children's band giving a concert. They were probably about 10 years old but they looked so serious. Even the baton twirlers didn't break a smile!
In the afternoon, we were supposed to go to the airport to leave for HangZhou. The plan was that we'd leave Hong Kong about 6:00 p.m., get to HangZhou about 8:00 p.m., and have the rest of the evening to settle into our new hotel room before the babies came the next morning.

When we got to the airport about 3:00, we found out that the airline had cancelled our flight to HangZhou. Our representative, Matthew, was fantastic. He told us not to panic and was on the phone with the HangZhou CCAI reps and dealing with the airline employees. He finally came back to tell us that they had arranged for us to fly on another airline (China Eastern) to Shanghai. In the meantime, the HangZhou reps would take a bus to Shanghai and meet us at the airport.

So we flew to Shanghai. I had originally wanted to go to Shanghai, but since we were there in the dark, we didn't get to see anything. Our CCAI reps, Daphne and Nancy, picked us up at the airport. We were so relieved to see them! We then had a THREE hour bus ride to get to HangZhou. Luckily Daphne and Nancy had brought us bottled water and Oreos to fortify us for the trip!

We didn't get to our hotel until 1:30 a.m. or so. So much for unpacking and preparing for the babies! We just crashed!