We were delayed on the runway in Guangzhou upon departure, so that set us back about 30 minutes when arriving into Los Angeles after a 15 hour flight. Like I mentioned in the previous post, we were very fortunate to be assigned bulkhead seats which allowed for the little wall mount bassinette. It was tiny, but Ming did sleep for at least 5-7 hours while on the long flight. She sat there at other times enjoying anything we would feed her to keep her distracted. Once in LA it was a total zoo going through immigration. Because we flew China Southern, most of the people on the plane were Chinese. Whereas on a Delta flight, or Northwest, or whoever (this is just my theory) I suspect that there are more American tourists and business people, therefore there is less of a bottleneck at immigration. The bottom line is, it took a really long time as we stood in line at the immigration desk. Finally Linda persuaded a worker to let us go to the front of the line for fear of missing our flight. When Ming got her paperwork stamped she finally was 'official,' but we were in trouble regarding our next flight from LA to Spokane. It took another 45 minutes, at least, to get our luggage. By that time we still had to wait in one more line to go through the final customs check. It was about 20 minutes before our departure of our Alaska Airlines flight from LA to Spokane when we finally broke free...and we were still 4 terminals away from the Alaska departures. LAX is really a miserable airport any time of the day or night. I won't bore you with all the gory details, but after almost 3 hours at LAX, we finally made it to our hotel in LA. At that point it had been over 24 hours from crawling out of a bed in Guangzhou. After a very late dinner at McDonalds we had a miserable few hours sleep and were wide awake by 3:30AM - including Ming. We were back at the airport by 5AM to ensure that we made it through the beefed up security checks for our 7AM flight to Portland.
Evern at 5AM LAX was heaving with people. Did I mention that it is a miserable place? After lines, lines and more lines (not to mention both despicable TSA people, and nice TSA people), the whole Szym family drew the lucky 'S' on our boarding passess that meant we were all selected for the security shake down. Full frisks and all. Levi received an exemption because he is under 12, but Linda and I (she was carrying Ming) got the full deal meal. We finally made it to our gate, but without much time to spare. Really a horrible place, that LAX...Our connections were good in Portland, and we were elated to touch down in Spokane just shortly after 11AM. It was great to receive such a wonderful welcome home from Grandma S., Aunt Cindy, Cousin Alex, Janice, Brandon, Bethany, & Elita Johnson, Kathy Storro, and Janell Lucas. As it turned out, Keith and Stacy Nelson, along with Kylie and Lily, caught up with us in Portland and the Nelson family was on the same flight into Spokane. It turned out to be a bigger adoption homecoming than we all realized it would be.
No comments:
Post a Comment