Plane #1: Seattle - Seoul, Korea.
The only hiccup for this flight happened while I was getting checked out by TSA. I had four Costco size containers of baby formula, and packets of brownie mix that I had taken out of the box ... so maybe they looked suspiciously like chocolate cocaine, even though dad cut out the instructions from the box and put them in the Ziploc. So naturally, I got stopped by TSA for an organic sample of the products in my carry on. Confirmed. That is indeed 8 packets of Ghirardelli brownie mix! :)
Plane #2: Seoul, Korea - Shanghai.
So on this flight, there's a lot more Chinese. Oh how I miss Chinese culture :) I got on my computer to let my parents know that I had landed safely and I was just hanging out on my layover, when I saw these two pictures posted by Kate and Lara :
I automatically just start laughing and crying because I miss Jett so much, and I know that he missed us just as much. A Chinese guy gets up from his seat, walks over to me, leans up against me and peers for a good 10 seconds at my screen. No privacy! No personal space! Just cracked me up. Yup, I'm ALMOST back in China.
Taxi: Airport - Bus Station
It was snowing in Shanghai, which was just awesomely exciting to me! I got to the bus station and looked for a hotel as close as possible. Lara had a harrowing journey back to Beilun that day and I knew I would need to get to the bus station the moment it opened in the morning in order to get a ticket home, or at least plan my next move if there were no tickets.
So this is the situation I'm looking at:
I'm in Shanghai at the top of the map. Typically we take the bay bridge south to Ningbo or if we're lucky, a bus that goes all the way out to Beilun. I knew from talking to Lara that they had closed the bridge the day before, so you had to go west around the bay out to Hangzhou, and then east to Ningbo. All the buses as of 2 pm the day Lara went were cancelled due to snow. And Lara actually took a renegade pirate bus around the bay, which took 12 hours. I was mostly worried that because of all the cancellations, there wouldn't be any tickets the next morning when I wanted to buy one, but luckily it appeared most people just cancelled their plans and I got the earliest bus out.
Bus Station:
I was probably a little funny if you were around me during my first couple days back in Bellingham, just because I was super excited about mundane things like sitting on a toilet seat. Well ... here's the bathroom in the South Shanghai Bus Station. It's a trough that just flows through all the stalls. And I was actually lucky enough to have the pipe in mine that helps flushes everything down the rest of the trough.
Bus: Bus Station - Beilun!
I was lucky to sit next to a young gentleman who actually slowed down his Shenzhen accent so I could understand him ... and he actually tried to understand me, and asked me to repeat things, and helped me to speak with correct grammar. When we got to the bridge, it was temporarily closed due to fog and snow. When we started moving again, said young gentleman asked me about Hangzhou. I immediately started to panic, knowing what happened to Lara when her bus went around to Hangzhou. And he said, "No no no, we're going back." So then again, I overreacted and was like, "BACK TO SHANGHAI?!?!" and he said, "No no no, back to the highway. We're going through to Beilun." After we were back on the road, I was able to explain to him about Lara's trip and why I freaked out. He really cracked up and assured me that we were going to Beilun via the bridge.
And it's good to be a laowai (foreigner). One of the gals on he bus recognized me and asked if I live in Li Ren. Apparently she does too (shocker that I don't recognize every Chinese person who lives in my apartment complex), and she offered to share a taxi with me. Super sweet!
So really, except for the short bridge closure, I got home pretty much as fast as was possible for flying into Shanghai. Never again. Always flying out of Ningbo from now on!
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