December 29th, one of those days that gives you a ridiculous story that you would rather have not experienced. It all started when we were getting ready to go. The driver was supposed to pick us up at 11:30am, we walked down to the gate with part of our stuff and he wasn't there. It was a miserable day, cold, raining, and super windy so this was all pretty awesome. Finally the security guy was able to communicate with us that our driver was down in the parking garage. These parking garages are huge, they are under the whole complex with crazy hallways and mazes complete with bunker like rooms and storage areas. So in order to find the driver we needed to walk back to our building and try going through the different hallways below our apartment building. We tried 3 before we finally found the van. The van was there, the driver was not. It was at this point that Kyle realized that he had no minutes left on his phone so he had no way of calling anyone. Great. The kids and I and part of our luggage stayed with the van while Kyle left to get everything else. After about 10 minutes he returned with the rest of our stuff but still no driver. So he left to go search for him and of course while he was gone Mr. Jong (driver) showed up, excitedly jabbering Chinese about 1000 miles a minute. About 10 minutes later Kyle shows up with a heater that one of the translators wanted, in the process of bringing it down he had shattered his phone so now it was officially not usable.
Phase 2, drive to the airport, because we are about 4 hours early Kyle tries to get the driver to take us somewhere to lunch, not happening, worried about the weather, so now 3 kids are complaining about how hungry they are. Good stuff. Get to the airport, check in fine. First thing to go smoothly so far. Next we have to go through customs before the security check. The girls and I are good, they check Kyle's passport. Find out he has over stayed his visa by 17 days. "Sir, please come with us", never good. We follow the customs guys to another counter. Kyle should have double checked his visa, but in his defense, his company had gotten all our visa's at the same time and had told us they were 90 day visas and had preplanned our exits from the country based on this timeline. Kyle actually had a 60 day visa. So, they told us that we owed them 3500 RMB, this is about 600 USD. We had about 180 USD with us. We had no phone, no way to contact anyone and no money. Tried using the ATM's with our credit cards but that didn't work. Finally we told them we have no money, we have no way of getting any money. What do we do? Met with blank stares. Basically we better get the money. Kyle came up with the idea of buy 500 USD worth of merchandise from a airport store (not a big deal there, they sell a lot of really expensive stuff duty free in the Shanghai airport) and returning it for the cash. They were like ok, lets try. Then Kyle asked them if the currency exchange took credit cards. No idea. Decided to try it. They did. YAY! had the cash. Went back to the customs desk and they told the girls and I to stay there then they took Kyle away. After about 10 minutes of sitting there with 2 kids who had to go to the bathroom and one baby who wanted to go wonder off by herself I started to panic a little thinking that they could take Kyle away, I would have no idea where he went, communication isn't exactly easy and I am in a foreign country with no contacts and no way of getting help from anyone. You can imagine my relief when after about 10 more minutes he reappeared and we were good to go. Ok. Next step. Security. Fine. Feed the kids. Fine. We have about 10 minutes until we board. It is snowing. WHAT? Yep, snowing in Shanghai. Plane is supposed to depart at 5:20, we are still sitting there waiting to board at 5:20 with no updates from the desk. Finally they tell us that they will board at 5:30. Get on the plane. We are already late and we have a 1.5 hour layover in Detroit and we have to go through customs. This could be interesting. An hour passes. Nothing. People are getting restless. Finally they tell us that they are in the process of deicing the plane and then we will go. Another hour passes. The Shanghai security that checked us again as we were boarding decided that no one could bring water on board. Any other liquid was fine but water was a no. I had just purchased 3 bottles. Awesome. So we have been sitting on a plane for 2 hours with no drink or food and the girls are starting to freak out. Another hour passes, now they have deiced 2 times and they are doing it again. it is 31 degrees out and snowing lightly. No accumulation. What the heck? Finally after another 30 minutes they turn on all the lights and tell us that we can get off the plane. They will keep working on it but in the mean time we can get off and sit in the airport. About 200 of us get off, we are all standing in the Jetway waiting to go back into the airport. After about 10 minutes they figure out that the security in Shanghai wont let us back in, we are in limbo between a locked door and the airplane that is going nowhere. We all head back to the airplane. On our way back in they told us that it is good now, we can go. Sweet. Now after sitting on an airplane for 4 hours we get to sit for another 13. But at least they can give us some water now. I've always heard about these stories, now I got to experience it with 3 kids 4 and under. Fun. After 17 hours on a plane we finally arrived in Detroit.
American soil. So amazing. So happy to be home for a while.
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