Sacramento for the weekend

We flew back to California just for the weekend to attend Sam's sister, Emily's wedding.  Now we are back in China, recovering.  It was quite the whirlwind weekend.  We left on a Friday and because of the time difference we arrived on the same Friday.  Then we came back on a Monday but actually arrived home on Tuesday night.  It can make your head spin to think about.  The wedding was beautiful and well worth the inconvenience and expense.  People kept telling us we were crazy to fly back just for a weekend but what can we say? It was fun to surprise Emily and many others who didn't think we would make it. 

 

A few notes about the trip.  All the other times we have flown to or from China on a Chinese airline, but this time we used an American airline.  I really didn't want to fly on an American airline but it was the cheapest available and it seemed to offer the same services as the Chinese one we usually use.  I was wrong about that.  The seats were more comfortable though. It was a four movie flight, meaning they showed four movies in a row and then a couple of TV shows. The nice thing was that as soon as we stepped on board it was like we were in the U.S. and it felt good to be surrounded by people speaking English.  I didn't remember American's being so friendly.  The passengers were either coming home from a vacation or foreign studies and they were all discussing their personal views of China.  It was fun to listen to.  One of our flight attendants was born in Shanghai but moved to Hawaii when he was ten years old so both his Mandarin and English were very good.  He wasn't that friendly to begin with but after I asked him some questions he livened up a bit.  The other flight attendants all seemed to be from the south or midwest and I heard "sweetie" said a lot. On the way home we had to fly first to Oregon, then to Japan, and then to China.  It was 21 hours total travel time.  The flight from Oregon to Japan was not near as fun and the flight attendants were not near as friendly. Sam was happy though because we were sitting near some Chinese people.   He made a couple of new friends. The only nice thing I can say about it was that they served us Icecream sandwiches.   However, I loved the Tokyo airport.   We didn't have much time there but I really enjoyed hearing the Japanese speak English to me.  Their accents are so cute and the people are very polite.  On our flight from Tokyo we got bumped to some nicer seats and some nicer flight attendants.  So we ended our adventure on a high note, although very tired.  We slept until 2:30 in the afternoon the next day.  I told Sam I'm not sure what time my body clock is on.  Its not California or China, but perhaps somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.