I
was wondering what exactly I could say on our China day 1 blog since all we
were going to be doing is traveling, but as anyone who has ever flown knows you
never know what to expect when flying. So
to start out, we knew that our layover in Atlanta was only going to be around
35 minutes, just enough time to get off one plane and take the shuttle to
another terminal and jump on that flight.
As we were getting ready for take-off in Memphis our pilot comes on the
speaker and says we have a slight delay of approximately 35 minutes before we
can take-off. Panic mode started setting
in for me. The whole way to Atlanta it
was looking as if we would now only have about 10 minutes to connect. We finally landed and I consulted my handy
Fly Delta app, and sure enough they were boarding our next flight, we were
praying that God would delay the plane just a few minutes so that we could make
it on time.
As
we made our way through our arrival terminal, Terminal A, we saw we had to be
in Terminal F in 7 minutes. We jumped on
the shuttle, only to stop at each corresponding terminal letter until we got to
Terminal F. Needless to say, we didn’t
make it to the gate by our departure time.
As we approached our gate, I saw the plane was still there. We took off running hoping to make it on
time. The guy at the gate said we made it,
and checked us in. But, there was not
enough room for our carry-ons and we would have to check them at the gate. The purpose of our carry-ons was to have “back-up”
clothing and essential items in case luggage was delayed. But, we made the flight and that was all that
mattered at that moment. As we got on
the plane there were maintenance men EVERYWHERE. Apparently something out of the ordinary occurred
that caused the oxygen masks to drop from their compartments in a few sections
of the plane. It could have been caused
while the baggage was being loaded, but regardless it caused an hour and half
delay in the flight but we made it.
Even
with the delay in Atlanta, I knew we had a 3 hour cushion in Los Angeles so I
was not too concerned. We arrived in
L.A. and talked to an agent from Delta about what we needed to do the get to
the international terminal. They told us
we had to get our luggage and go to the terminal and recheck everything,
because they would not be checked all the way to Guangzhou. We both recall the guy who checked our bags
in Memphis telling us they were checked all the way through, as well as the
agent in Atlanta telling us that about our carry-ons. So we went to the carrousel waited for our
luggage. April found a Delta luggage
agent and told her our story and she pulled it up on the computer and she said
they were checked all the way through as well.
So we trusted her and went on to the international terminal. We still had plenty of time so there were no
worries, except about our luggage. I
remembered that my blood pressure meds were in my carry-on, since it was with
me, and I would be up a creek without them.
The Fly Delta App has a luggage tracker on it and we knew the bags were
in L.A. with us but it did not cover the China Southern flight.
The
flight to China was an incredibly long 15 hours. The in-seat entertainment, meals, and other amenities
did NOT make the time move any faster. Luckily
it was a “red-eye” flight so it was easy to snooze here and there. At this point I guess I should say that it
was dark when we left Atlanta and we did not see daylight until we reached
China, some 20 hours later.
We
got to Guangzhou and went to the chaos that is the luggage carousel. I made my way to the start of the carousel to
avoid the crowd. As the luggage began to
appear, out of the first 8 bags six of them belonged to us!! I cannot begin to tell you how many people
were on our double decker plane, but to see that our bags came off first blew
me away. And to top that off, as we
arrived at the customs check-point the girl just waved us on by.
We
met up with our pickup guide and she and our driver, who would do well driving
in Memphis, got us to our hotel. I don’t
think after that ride April will complain about my driving ever again, it was a
little scary there a few times. We checked-in
and went to grab a quick bite for breakfast at McDonald’s so that we could get
back to the room to Skype with Belle. We
wanted to go exploring in the area, but wanted a quick nap. Well our 2 hour nap turned into 7 hours, we
didn’t hear our alarm at all. Once we
realized the time we ate supper and are now relaxing in the room, which is
really cool by the way. Day one is done,
as are we. Tomorrow we will venture out
a little and share pictures. Stay tuned!
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