GREAT LAKES LIVING: China: Coming Home

Maggie's first flight! Guangzhou to Shanghai.

Before our trip to China, I scoured adoption blogs, travel blogs, pinterest, anything that would tell me what to do with a 15 month old on an international flight across the world. Advice, solutions, anything at all.

Do you know what I came up with? Nothing. No tricks, no toys, nothing.

The only piece of advice...survive. Just survive.

And that is what we did. We survived.

Our day started at 3:30am on Thursday, August 17th, China time.

We loaded Maggie up, already dressed for the longest day of her little life and headed to the airport around 5am.

Guangzhou airport is notorious for being delayed. We had a 1 hour an 55 minute layover in Shanghai before we had to catch our flight to Detroit.

Upon arrival, we found out that we did not have boarding passes for our Shanghai to Detroit flight because we had an infant in arms ticket. Um, what?!?! No boarding pass?

After translations, checking, and waiting we found out that since Delta did not have it's hub in Guangzhou, they could not help us, but that they would print our boarding pass in Shanghai. We also found out that we would need get our bags, re-check them, get our boarding pass and go through security AGAIN before we could get to our gate for Detroit....in 1 hour and 55 mins.

So we made our way through security, loaded up on a tram jammed full of people that drove us 15 minutes away to our plane and boarded our first flight. The first leg of our flight was 4 hours long and Maggie's first flight ever. She did well on the flight and even slept some. Normally a 4 hours flight with a toddler would have intimidated me, but with a 13 hour flight looming...it didn't seem so bad in comparison!

Once our plane touched down in Shanghai, my heart started racing and we were ready to jet off that plane to make our next flight...the flight home. I strapped Maggie in tight and off we ran...literally ran. We made it to the luggage belt and waited. Luckily, Delta had a representative who spoke english who started helping us. She took Jessica and I with all the kids to get tickets and we left the dads to get the luggage. It was nerve-wracking to walk away from Ryan, leaving him in a foreign airport with no passport or identification while I tried to get boarding passes for the 3 of us. After a long wait, we were finally able to get boarding passes and Delta told us they would take care of our bags and check them in for us. They told us that we needed to sprint to our gate. So off we ran...until we got to a security check... and than another one. I showed our passports 7 times in the Shanghai airport. We had to go through International immigration and security 3 times. There were other American passengers that were trying to make our DTW flight and they ushered us through the expediate line because we had children with us.

Fun fact about security: I filled our thermos full of boiling water at the Guangzhou airport (they have hot water spickets everywhere) for Maggie's bottle..after we went through security. However, since we had to go through security AGAIN and you can't bring liquids on a flight (Even though the only place we had been was in am airport) So, they made Ryan drink it. If you want to bring any fluid through security you have to drink it in front of them. I guess they assume that if it is poison or something bad that you won't drink it?!

So after finally making it out of immigration, with Delta staff waiting with signs for us, we were told that the plane was all boarded and we needed to run to get there before they closed the doors. We told them we had small children and asked them to wait... and then we ran. We ran with Maggie strapped to me in her carrier, her diaper bag on my back and Ryan with a rolling carry-on and backpack for 40+ gates. In case you were wondering, Shanghai is a MASSIVE airport.

With sweat dripping down my whole body, we made it on the plane to Detroit. We ran or hustled for almost 2 hours, but we made it!! We were on our way home!

So, how do you do a 13 hour and 1 min flight to Detroit with a tired 15 month old? You feed them lots of puffs, one by one, slowly. You switch parents. You stand and rock. You survive.

My only photo from our entire 13 hour flight. Blurry and surviving.

Maggie probably slept a total of 3 hours of our 13 hour flight, but overall, she did well. I got motion sickness for the last 5 hours and felt like throwing up the whole...but to no avail. Luckily Maggie was comfy in Daddy's arms, so I could try to not throw up on her.

We landed in Detroit around 2pm on August 17th... 23 hrs after we had woken up.

We went through immigration and were put in a separate side room that mostly resembled a DMV. We watched an immigration officer open our precious brown envelope, casually leaf through it and than stamp Maggie's Chinese passport. That single stamp made her a citizen of the United States of America for the rest of her life!

We collected our luggage and helped the Goodpasters look for theirs to connect to their flight home.

It was odd to say goodbye to them. Virtually strangers 2 weeks ago, we walked through some of the most important changes in both our lives together and traveled every step of the way. We were sad to say goodbye, but SO SO happy to be home!

We loaded up our luggage cart and headed to meet our babies. Jack and Colin were waiting on the gate and ran to us. Macy came flying in shortly and finally, we were all together. Home.

Poor Maggie had one more adventure before she would end her travel...the carseat. Having never ridden in one, she panicked at being restrained with the strange faces of her new siblings trying to calm her down.