Leaving China!

The day has finally come! After months of living in China the count down till we get to America is finally over. December 20^th was the day of Eric’s final exam for his classes. We planned to grade his exams that night and then give them to a teacher in the morning. We thought it would take us about two hours to grade his tests if we worked together. He got home around 10 pm from the school and we got started. We didn’t finish until about 4 am. Boy did we underestimate how long it would take to grade. We were so exhausted. We both gained a new respect for all of our teachers and all that they do. After that we went to bed but needed to get up pretty early to finish cleaning and packing so that we could leave.

At around 12 we headed to the railway station in Nanjing and left our home of about 4 months. It felt strange to leave and now we would never come back, but I was soooo excited.  We took the train the Shanghai. 

When we arrived we spent a couple hours traveling, eating, and doing some last minute shopping. We had gotten a hotel close to the airport so that in the morning we could relax and sleep in a little before catching our flight home. However, we expected to be able to take a taxi from the subway to the hotel. When we left the subway stations there were not any taxis. Well not any legitimate ones anyways. There were some creepy men with vans that begged us to get in their vans… I refused.

So we decided to walk to our hotel. But by this point it was around 9 at night and getting pretty cold. The walk was about 1.5 miles and I was not thrilled. Plus we had all of our luggage with us. In other words it wasn’t a fun walk. First we walked down this main road that didn’t have any sidewalks or street lights so I was beginning to get scared. Then we found a sidewalk and walked down that for a bit. Then there was a smaller street we walked down with very little lighting and some creepy buildings all around us. Some men tried to talk to us which I found even creepier. Then another unmarked taxi car drove by and tried to get us to get in his car with him. He wouldn’t give up and drove beside us for quite awhile. I was seriously freaked at this point and told Eric so. He suggested we pray silently for help to find it soon and while I was praying I saw a hotel sign. Thankfully it was ours. Apparently we just needed to calm down for a second and ask for help. I was so glad we finally found it. When we got in we were exhausted so we just went straight to bed.

We slept in in the morning because our plane didn’t leave till 2pm. We got a free shuttle from our hotel to the airport at 11. Then we went to get our tickets. I felt we had had plenty of adventures already with our trip home, but apparently not. When we went to check in they had a ticket for Eric, but not me! We kinda freaked out for the next ten minutes. Then we calmed down enough to find a phone and call Spencer the guy with China Horizons who we primarily communicated with. He told us to double check with the airport and he would see what he could do.

It dawned on me that maybe the travel agent had just forgotten to change my ticket from the 31^st of December to the 22^nd so I told Eric to check if that is what happened. Sure enough I was scheduled to leave the 31^st. Luckily, there was room on the plane and they were easily able to change my ticket.

From Shanghai we flew to Seoul, Korea. When we landed we of course had to go through security. The line was sooo long. We were waiting in line for quite awhile and we realized there just was no way that we were going to be able to catch our connecting flight before takeoff. Our plane had already been boarding for about ten minutes when Eric started looking for a way to skip the line. Lucky us there was a sign that said the elderly and pregnant can have priority. So Eric drug me to the front of the line and pointed at my belly. The lady looked at me then at our boarding passes and let us jump ahead in line. Thank goodness! Unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the airport we had to jog like half a mile just to get to our boarding gate. We barely made it.

Finally we had a few hours to rest. Our plane ride from Seoul to Seattle was 9.5 hours. We watched like four movies. We were excited to finally really be leaving. When we got to Seattle we had to rush to make it to our last flight from there to Walla Walla, but everything ran smoothly so we made it with a few extra minutes to spare. The last plane ride was sooo short. We were so excited to make it home finally.

When we got in we felt such relief at making it. It felt amazing to be home where we belonged.