Here We Go

The long awaited day has finally come with a wakeup call at 4 am (yuckkkk!!)  Fortunately the night before was much more calm than a normal night before travelling at the Pasakarnis household.  Our good friend Scott Gayman drove us to the airport (Thank you, Scott!) and everything went smoothly into O’Hare.  Then, there was the 3 hour layover that turned into 4 hours due to some maintenance paperwork delays that caused our plane to be towed to the gate about 45 minutes late.  So, what do you do with a very energetic 6 year old with too much time on her hands?

This

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And this

We then had the enjoyment of the most disorganized and chaotic boarding process we have ever been a part of in a US airport.  It kind of turned into a free for all where Steve and Hailie ended up getting on the plane 5 minutes before Kathy did due the mad crush of of very rude people all struggling to get onto the plane before their boarding group was even called.  Southwest Airlines’ system of getting on with unassigned seats was a 1000 times better than this United Airlines debacle was.  They at least got our special meal requests OK, and the meals were actually pretty good for vegetarian airline fare.

We landed in Beijing about 45 minutes late, and with some fairly long immigration checkpoint lines and the long slog to baggage claim where we were pleased to find all of our bags present and accounted for (PEK airport is HUGE; did I say HUUUUGE!!) it was almost an hour later when we ran the gauntlet of people waiting for people at exit B for international arrivals.  We got to the end of the line, and there was not a single person with a WACAP sign to be found.  So, here we are after  20 hours of travelling with no guide, no ride, no phone, and no language skills. The taxi drivers were very friendly though; we were propositioned maybe 15 times about a taxi ride.   After 20 minutes of wandering back and forth to try and run into our guide, Steve asked a Great Wall representative if he knew either of our potential guides.   He did not, but he knew how we could contact them.  The information desk staff were kind enough to call the first name on our list.  After a long discourse in Chinese (which looked like leaving a message on a voicemail) the lady behind the desk hands the phone to Steve, and it is our guide George live on the line.  He is nowhere near us , but he is going to call a friend of his (who it turns out is there to pick up other people for other purposes) to find us.  He does a few minutes later, and he tells us to stay put and he goes off to take care of his normal business.  After another 20 minutes or so our guide finally has us in his care and we are heading out to the van for the ride to our hotel.  So, 26 hours after waking up we made it to our hotel.  We had nothing left in us so we scratched together some dinner out of our suitcase of food we brought and pretty much crashed out.  Not exactly a smooth, stress free day, but we arrived safely with everything intact, so we are thankful for God’s presence and protection.  Now to adjust to a 13 hour time change with a 6 year old who has trouble with the 1 hour time change when we travel to the Midwest.