Ok so our plan to get home didn't quite go to plan... and we were gifted a "bonus day" in China. Here's the story...
We got up Friday morning, did some quick packing then ventured out for one last trip... a short subway run to the silk market (we werent entirely sure about getting to the silk market from the subway, but the subway station actually opens out into the silk market - who knew?) We did some last minute shopping, then back to the hotel around lunchtime for an afternoon check-out.
We got to the airport, through the various security and customs desks, took the train ride (yep - in Beijing you catch a train to your boarding gates) and reached the gate around 4:30, ready for a 6pm departure. Then, we waited.
Around 5:30, we noticed the absence of a plane at the boarding gate, so we doubted the 6pm departure was still "real" but hey, nothing else to do but to wait.
6pm came and went... then 7pm. I should pause here and colour this chapter with a couple of observations about China. These are not complaints or whines... we love China and in any different culture there are differences - thats what keep things interesting, but this story really can't be told properly without noting some observations, namely:
1) In the west, companies generally try to have 1 policy for all, and stick to it. Not so in the east.
2) Whatever this policy may be, companies in the west generally try to communicate what it is, so people know where they stand. Not so in the east.
3) In the west, if people encounter a lineup, they will wait in line at the back of it. Not so in the east.
4) In the west, you can always get someone to speak to you in English, and/or understand your English questions. Not so in the east.
Ok, those things understood... 7pm came... then 8pm. We asked at the boarding gate what was happening. They said that due to bad weather the plane flying into Beijing had diverted to another city to land. It would take 1.5 hours for it to fly to Beijing when it took off, but it had not left yet. This was a bit confusing since we had been at the airport for 4 hours at this point and had been watching planes take off and land the whole time, but hey, ok.
Then came 9pm. Around 9:30 we saw an Air Canada plane touch down and taxi to our gate. Yay! Then we waited some more. We watched through the windows as they unloaded luggage, as cleaning crews boarded, and we tried to think of all the other things that need to be done to turn around a plane. Then around 10pm the Air Canada folks at the gate started talking about hotel vouchers. The implied message being, this plane wasn't leaving tonight. I heard from someone else that apparently the delays had pushed the pilot over his maximum flying hours, so he wouldn't be able to fly back to Canada (something they would have known at least 1.5 hours ago when the plane left to head towards Beijing, but hey).
So, someone with a big Air Canada flag arrived and everyone was to follow them. This is where #3 above got a little frustrating as we found ourselves bustled back and forth, with the little ones taking a few bumps as people tried to jostle to the front. I'm all for respecting culture, but when people start bumping the kids around they get my "very western" reaction. Not going to budge on that one. Oh and the train to get to the boarding gates... seemed quite cute on the way to the gates, was just another chore to negotiate when you are just following a flag without being entirely sure where the flag is going. Back through customs (little Miah's passport now has an exit stamp, with a "CANCELLED" stamp over the top of it, as a souvenir of this night) and out to the street where we were loaded onto buses (more jostling and bumping of little ones) to be taken to a local hotel.
At the front desk of the hotel we had more hassles as it is standard practice to use your passport to check into hotels in China. Since Miah was still under her Chinese passport, they wanted to know her permanent address in China. I tried to explain that up until yesterday, her address was the Grand Mercure hotel in Beijing. Before that it was the Dongfang hotel in Guangzhou. He didn't seemed to buy this one bit. Still, as we "negotiated" (and my mood degraded from "hello, its nice to meet you" down to "just give me the stupid room key") we eventually went from 2 rooms down to 1 (5 of us!) but at this stage we just wanted some sleep.
After some determined questioning, the AC staff at the airport told us that the flight would be leaving 9am the next morning, and the buses would return to the airport for 6:30 for check-in. They also told us that the flight would leave, same plane, same seat allocations, same everything in the morning. We tried to ask why, if we had boarding passes and assigned seats, why did we need to check-in again, rather than just going to the boarding gate... but that couldn't get over the language barrier.
Anyway, the buses were going to be at the airport at 6:30... no one could tell us what time they were leaving the hotel, so we just approximated from the time it took us to get there, and set our alarms for 5am. By now it was about 1am, so not a whole lot of sleep to be had, but we'll take it.
Up at 5am, we were all ready to go around 6am when they pushed something under the door saying that the buses would leave at 8am and everyone would get an alarm call at 6:30. So, we could have slept longer. Oh well. We grabbed some breakfast and the personal highlight was Jon leaving his backpack in the restaurant after breakfast... you know, THE backpack... the one with passports, adoption forms, visa forms, absolutely EVERYTHING in it that we needed over the next 24 hours. Fortunately, as he ran (literally) back down to the restaurant, the staff there had found it and set it aside.
We chatted to a Canadian girl in the hotel lobby and she said she was going to grab a taxi back to the airport. Get ahead of the crowd, avoid the jostling and it would be pretty cheap from the fairly local hotel. Good idea. So we grabbed a taxi and were at the airport at maybe 7:30am.
Next hurdle... at the check-in desk there were no Air Canada counters open. Maybe 10 other people had got there early and were waiting. Somehow, word flowed down that some desks would be opened around 7:45. Then, someone else appeared and said "everyone follow me" and took us around to some other counters, where they started checking folks in. It looked like a complicated process though as they spent maybe 10-15 minutes on each person, and we wondered at that rate just how long it would take to check back in a 777 of maybe 450 people. Well, as we waited we saw our troop of buses pulling up outside and the lobby flooding with people anxious to get to Canada. Next speed bump (and next "western moment")... we get to our place in line and are told that these desks are not really Air Canada desks which is why it is taking so long, so we should go back around to where we were before and line up behind the 200 or so people now waiting in the lobby. It may not have been polite, but we declined, and invited them to check us in anyway. They did.
Back through customs again, the train ride (we were getting pretty good at this by now) and back to the boarding gate, and this time to a real plane, that actually took off.
The flight itself went quite well... about as well as it could for a 13 hour flight with a 2 year old and a 4 year old. Angelina snoozed off and on throughout, and Miah slept for a good chunk of the time too. Mum and Dad had no such luck, but didn't really expect to. Fast forward several hours of staring at the map screen and imploring the little plane to move to the right, and here we are in Toronto.
Toronto represented another little challenge, but we were on the home stretch now. Our stopover in Toronto was about 1.5 hours. Normally more than enough time to find a new boarding gate, but this time around we had to...
1) Clear customs, since this was an international flight
2) Go to the immigration office and process Miah's Canadian residency paperwork
3) Re-claim our suitcases and re-check them onto our new connecting flight to Halifax
4) Clear security again and find our gate
We made it, but with not a whole lot of time to spare. The flight to Halifax was not uneventful, as we hoped for. Angelina threw up all over herself and her seat. We called for a flight attendant but none were available. We took her and her vomit bag to the bathroom, and proceeded to stand her on the toilet while we washed her down and changed her clothes. We sat Angel in Miah's seat, as Jon held Miah for landing. By now, the announcement that we should fasten our seatbelts as we approach Halifax since it will get "pretty bumpy" on landing brought no discernable reaction. By this point, if we could touch down in a field someplace in HRM I think we would have accepted that. We touched down on the runway as planned then to the blur of meeting family, finding suitcases and on to the drive home.
It was after supper time by the time we were home so we didn't do too much... basically got the kids into bed and put an end to a day that somehow felt like it spanned about 72 hours.
It's good to be home.
First of all, right around lunch we had a Christmas party at Daddy's work. The girls posed for a few pics in their party dresses before heading out. 
Once we got over to Halifax, we indulged in pizza, juice, chips (lunch of champions), then the gals decorated gingerbread cookies with candies, frosting, etc. 
They had their faces painted (as princesses, in case you were wondering) then received gifts as Santa came to visit. 
