A Friday Night Fiasco

Our plane landed in SFO airport on time after a smooth, normal flight. 

"Camp Chen Zhou Luggage"

Then the real fun began...

Can you do math?

8 people x (2 carry on bags weighing 25 lbs + 2 checked bags weighing 50 lbs)

If my calculations are correct, there was about 32 pieces of luggage, weighing about 1,200 lbs that needed to be moved by us off the luggage carousel, into an elevator, up a floor, onto one side walk, across the street, and then (because of the rain) under a shelter. (SFO gets a D- for user friendliness) 

Shuttle! FINALLY!

While we waited for a shuttle to our hotel. For an hour. Did I mention it was raining? And chilly? And 2 shuttles for our hotel passed but they were already full. So we called the hotel twice to get them to send us our own. Finally, they did and we got all loaded onto the shuttle (with very little help from the driver). 

15 minutes later, we were at the hotel. Cue unloading of 32 luggage pieces. In the rain. At midnight IL time. Finally all the luggage was unloaded into the hotel lobby and Shannon went to check us in.

Finally on the way to the right hotel! Check out all that luggage!

Only to find out that we were at the wrong hotel. The travel agency had apparently changed us to a different hotel without telling Frank, our Visiting Orphans Coordinator, so that he could tell us.

We called the correct hotel twice, only for them to tell us that they couldn't send a shuttle to get us because they were "too busy". Past midnight. Right.

God bless the first hotel's driver. He offered to take us to the other hotel and help us load and unload our stuff. (Big tip. BIG.)

So we went through the check in process and because of the whole "our shuttle is too busy to come get you" lie, we got FREE breakfast this morning at the hotel's restaurant. Which was delicious. 

Yum, breakfast.

By the time I got to bed last night, I was exhausted. And slept like a rock until 9:15! Except it was 9:15 IL time. This girl's sleep clock doesn't like time changes I guess! I wonder how that will work over in China. Ha. 

So now we are all just sitting in the hotel lobby, blogging away and waiting on our 1 pm tour bus to come get us for a tour of the SFO.

Tired, but happy and doing well. No idea when the next update will come, since we have to be at the airport at 5 am!! Vancouver for 2 hours, and then onto China! (To the tune of an 11+ hour flight!

Good morning, rainy SFO!