The flight...

Well, we made it onto the flight just fine, thanks to my brother in law dropping us off. Here's a picture of my mom at curbside. Note the large orange suitcase in the picture. This is the last time we see said suitcase for a good day and a half. That big orange suitcase, known as "The Great Pumpkin", was promptly lost by the airline. But we'lll get to that later.

The flight was good - packed with people - but any airline that has complimentary wine, sherry and cognac is just fine by me. We had seats in the very back of the plane, next to the bathroom. I gave mom the inside seat, and I took the aisle in our two seat wide row. We flew up and over Alaska and Russia to get here. The flight went quick - 3 movies, a few glasses of wine, and 40 million people shaking the back of my seat as they walk past in the aisle, and we're there. I had one little dragon lady grandma relishing in shaking the hell out of my seat as she was walking by. Hooray for polite elders, eh? But we made it to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong airport was really nice - they redid it, and it's gorgeous. All the signs were in English as well as Chinese, and the terminal was clean and nice. We found the herd of TJSL students waiting for the connecting flight to Hangzhou. We met and bonded and looked bleary after the overnight flight together. Our flight to Hangzhou was nice as well, breakfast of fried noodles for me, and a rather greasy omlette for my mum. I was next to a very nice business man who spoke a bit of English.


But since my battery is almost dead, this is the end.

More later.