The Last 24 hours in China (Part 3)

We passed teenage girl sitting on the sidewalk. What she was doing there I have no idea. We just kept walking. We walked underneath a dark underpass with a man sleeping in his van. We made a point to walk near traffic so we could be seen. We walked past cars parked on the entrance ramp to the airport. Drivers standing next to there parked cars stared at us. We kept walking. A man in a bright orange suit with a broom stared us with a baffled look upon his face as we walked up the entrance ramp to the airport. I said, “Ne how (hello in Chinese),” and he responded something in Chinese but we continued to walk right past him. We passed more parked cars and drivers sleeping or talking on their cell phones. We were almost there. We finally reached the door to the terminal with a sigh of relief but we soon realized the door wouldn’t open. The sign said to go to door 6 so our marched continued.

When we reached door six it quickly opened and for the first time in about an hour we felt safe. We found the first seats that we could and sat down. We began to regroup and reassess our situation. Just sit down and rest was our only task.

For the next few hours I mostly tried to sleep. Holly found snacks and water, she sought out information about our flight, and she complained about the taxi service in a letter to the airport.

When 5 o’clock came Holly went to get freshened up and changed her clothes. Upon her return we took the airport shuttle to Terminal 2. From there we went through the tiring process of getting checked in, going through customs and security, finding our gate, and grabbing a bit to eat, and waiting for our flight to board. First, we would fly to Tokyo where we would have a short layover.

As you can imagine it was a long flight, 12 hours back to the U.S. from Tokyo. Holly and I had separate seats so I visited her whenever the person next to me got up. She had a large screen television in front of her that didn’t work so she pretty much stared at a blank screen for the entire flight. We had made it a point to discuss that we would fill out one customs form and go through together at JFK. One thing we were both happy about was abundance of American food on the flight. Sure it was airline food but we ate every bite because we hadn’t had food like it in 20 days.

One thing I noticed on our flight was that one of the American flight attendants that we had was not very understanding of people that couldn’t speak English. This was different from what we experienced when flying in Asia. Flight attendants would look at us and automatically do their best to speak English. The American flight attendant did her best to talk English slowly and clearly to anyone who couldn’t speak English. Now, if some one approached you and starting talking very slowly and clearly in Chinese would you understand? I think not. I guess you could say that we English speakers are very lucky that the rest of the world basically caters to our lack of speaking multiple languages.

Our plane touched down at JFK just around 3 o’clock in the afternoon on August 11th. The most interesting aspect was that we left Tokyo at the same time and day that we arrived in New York. It was like traveling through time.

The plane began to disembark. Finally, when it was my turn I exited the plane, I turned right at the end of the jet bridge, all the meanwhile wondering when I would see Holly. She was seated in front of me so I knew she got off the plane first. I continued walking amidst the herd of people heading for customs. I was shocked that I hadn’t seen Holly by this point. I began winding through the many lanes of the customs carousel just following the people in front of me when finally I said to myself, ‘stop!’

‘Where the hell was Holly?’ I thought. I began peering through the crowd. I couldn’t see her anywhere. ‘How could I have missed her?’ I saw a woman who worked for the airport and I waved her over. I explained that I couldn’t find my wife. She looked at me like I lost my right arm. I explained that we didn’t sit together and that she got off the plane before me. The woman asked for her name and went on the other side of customs to see if Holly was there. She returned without any news of Holly and handed me a blank customs form and recommended that I go through customs. It was then that I finally saw Holly walking toward the customs line. I was baffled. How did she get behind me and so far behind me? We came to the conclusion that there must have been multiple exits or jet bridges from the plane and somehow we missed each other. Thankfully, we were finally back in the U.S. What a relief after the last 48 hours.