Anyway, during the night I developed a fever and body aches. This is what the kids have had but it took me getting it to finally realise what it was--the flu. The one shot we didn't have before our trip was a flu shot. I struggled through the night then early in the morning I got a face cloth and wet it for my forehead and went to the other room and slept in Jade's bed. I felt very weak and extremely tired. I had no interest in getting up or eating or anything other than sleeping and I had no idea how I was going to manage getting down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast never mind packing my bag, going to the airport and flying. Paul took the kids down to breakfast. Jade was totally recovered from the previous evening and was bright and bouncy again. I dragged myself down about 15 minutes later and ate a tiny bowl of cereal and a glass of juice. Then I went back up to the room and laid down on the bed again while Paul and the kids packed the bags and made ready to be picked up at 11. My illness meant that I hadn't gone back to the Russian shop next to the hotel to get a Babushka doll.
Fortunately we had arranged for a transfer to Harbin's Taiping Airport because I know I couldn't have coped with the whole exercise of getting a taxi. Since I'd taken panadol at breakfast I began to feel much better and was OK by the time our van arrived. We had a guide, Catherine, arranged by OCDF but she had never been with an adoptive family (or even another family with kids) before so was very curious about us. Her English was OK but not at the standard of that of other guides. I think the guides with better English go to other cities in China where there is more demand.
When we got to the airport there were long queues to check in (well long for a little airport like this) and we were evidently running a bit late because our flight time had been changed--and we hadn't been told! I hate to say it but another black mark for OCDF from us. Even our guide Catherine was unaware of the time change for our flight. I've just checked the Harbin departures website for yesterday and our flight was scheduled to depart at 12:35 instead of 1:15--ie 40 minutes earlier. We should have been informed of this. Thankfully we had Catherine with us to barge into the check-in queues and rush our bags onto the plane. If we'd been on our own we might have missed our flight. We farewelled her and then went through security still unaware of our scheduled departure time. I went looking for a toilet and found a small gift stall with--yes--Babushka dolls! So I got my doll after all. A bit of a strange souvenir from China!
My doll still unopened. Evidently there are 7 dolls in all.
We then walked to our gate where everyone was lined up already. When we got on we found the plane was just over half full. For some reason the four of us weren't seated together. Two of us were in row 21 seats E and G, one was in row 23 seat E and the last in row 24 seat C. With such an empty plane we don't know why we weren't seated together. The kids were the ones in row 21 and as we discovered there was no F seat so they were together. Still a child should be seated with an adult for safety during the flight. Anyway we swapped seats and I sat next to Jade in row 21 and Paul swapped so that he and Jarrah were effectively together with only the aisle between them. There was one other foreign family on the flight and they were also separated. When I sat down there was a middle-aged woman sitting next to me. Her seat was originally the aisle seat but she swapped with me and Jade so Jade was on the aisle and I was next to her. (This was in a 4 seat middle section of an Airbus 300.) I don't think this woman had ever flown before because she had her tray table down and also paid extremely close attention to the flight safety demonstration. Then when she saw us put our bags under the seat in front of us made a comment that--oh, you can do that! (She said something to this effect in Chinese.) Just as the plane was taxiing she jumped up from her seat and dashed off to change her seat again. From what Paul has said many people were swapping seats left and right after the plane closed its doors.
We had an uneventful flight and landed in Pudong Airport in Shanghai. Because of my illness and just general tiredness from the kids we discussed trying to get back to Australia early. In Shanghai we rang Singapore Airlines to find out that this wouldn't be possible--all flights to Melbourne between now and next Tuesday were fully booked. Instead we decided to cut our time in Shanghai short and have a Singapore stopover. So we are now leaving China early on the 24th for Singapore.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment