The same date, twice.

April 18, 2011

It is hard to describe the déjà vu and strange feeling you get when you have the same day twice.  Meaning when we left this morning from our hotel in Beijing, we arrived in Seattle on the same morning at the same time that we had left our hotel.  So we are living the same day twice.

Leaving China was sad, but we were excited to come home.  It’s been 26 days of traveling, living out of our suitcases and really missing good internet from sites that are not blocked.  Some cities we weren’t even allowed to get onto CNN.  Mostly it was just all of the social networking sites that were blocked- facebook, twitter, hootsuite, blogger, etc.

When we arrived at the Beijing airport Terminal 2, we put all of our luggage on 3 carts and entered looking for the Delta counter, which we found and then made our way to the business class section.  Luckily we were flying business class as with 6 checked bags and the 70 lb weight limit, we certainly needed that!  Then we went through security, got a full body pat down (everyone did) and went to the equivalent crown room, which was very nice.

Our carry-on's in the crown room equivalent.

Then it was time to board our 777 for our 11 hour flight to Seattle.  Before we could get onto the plane we had to go through another security check where everyone was individually scanned and bags were opened to take water out.  It was a nice idea to have another security check before we boarded and I think the US should do that too.  We had dinner first and then breakfast right before we landed.  Dad slept a fair amount on the flight, mom slept for a few hours and I slept for maybe an hour but rested the whole time and watched 3 movies- cheesy movies: Gulliver’s Travels, Little Fockers, and the Tourist (which I couldn’t finish because we were landing).  It was a very bumpy flight actually, and mom as usual started talking with the stewardesses, who were lovely and one of them gave us the name of about 20 places to go to next time we are in Beijing for pearls.  It was a long flight, but it really wasn’t too bad.  It was cool to see the artic circle area and Russia and the Bering Straight.  (that would be a fun trip)  

The Purser on the plane said over the loud speaker when we were about to land, good morning, again, on the 18^th of April.  When we arrived in Seattle, we deplaned and our flight was a little bit early and arrived before customs was open.  So we had to wait a few minutes before they opened and we went through, then went down to get our checked bags, 5 of the 6 bags were the first ones off of the plane and the 6 was a little bit later.  It was nice to have them so quickly!  We then had to drop them off so they could board our next flight to NY.  We had to go through security again and take out our liquids and take off our shoes and jackets, which we are not used to anymore… you don’t have to do that in China!  We went to the crown room and it was nice to see all the signs in English and that everyone spoke English.  It was then time for us to board our next 4.5 hour flight from Seattle to JFK.  The plane was an old Northwest plane, so we didn’t have any in flight entertainment and were given a voucher because of it.  Pretty neat.  We were served breakfast again (our second breakfast of the day).

My brother was waiting at the airport to pick us up and I think he was very relived that we were home.  We had to actually get off the plane not at a gate and we got onto this special bus that raised up to reach our plane door and then lowered us so that we could drive to a gate to be dropped off.  It took a lot longer, but it was different and kind of cool to experience.  We successfully got all of our bags and got stuck is terrible traffic on the way home- it took us a little over 3 hours to get home!!  So overall, we had about a 28 hour travel day.