August 16, 2009

I am currently 6 hours into our 15 hour flight from Chicago to Hong Kong, which means that we are somewhere over the Arctic Ocean. Who would have thought that you would fly north to get from Chicago to Hong Kong!

We had an interesting departure from Bradley Airport this morning. We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel at the airport on Saturday night, so that we would be ready for our 7.15AM flight. That worked well and Jacob and Duncan had a pool party for their friends last night, courtesy of the hotel. But then this morning, when we lugged our gargantuan bags to the check-in counter, the agent asked us how long we were staying in Hong Kong. Ten months was the answer. Where is your visa? I showed her. They had been sent to us courtesy of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where I will be working. “This visa is not valid” she says. “It has to be used on or before March 11 2009”. I tell her that there must be some mistake – we had just been sent those visas, but she sent us off to another line for problem cases like us. We stood in that long and slowly moving line for a few minutes before Duncan came up with the solution. The visa says it must be used by 3-11-09. Everywhere but in the USA, they put the day before the month, so 3-11 means November 3 not March 11. I go back to the agent who is very apologetic and gives us personal service from that point on. “Your bags are all more or less under 50 pounds, right?” she says, printing out the tags. In fact they were because we had worked hard to make sure of that, but they could have been 100 pounds for all anybody knew.

The trip to Chicago was uneventful. We had to wait almost 4 hours for our flight to Hong Kong, which we boarded on time. However, then we sat on the runway for close to 2 hours as thunderstorms rolled through and then they gave priority to landing flights. But eventually we got airborne, flying north, which was a surprise. The route to Hong Kong is up over the pole and then down through Siberia, Mongolia and China.