Jan 19-23, 2009

Jan 19, 2009 – today was another quiet day. Floyd worked in his “Home Office” this morning before being picked up by his co-worker, Wilson to travel to Yantai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantai) to visit some dairies and put on some training meetings. I walked up to the store for some groceries before lunch. In the afternoon after Floyd left, I exercised and began gathering things to get ready to pack for the trip home.
Jan 20, 2009 – today was the last time I will grocery shop this trip. I realized I needed to take inventory and use up all the food we have on hand and only buy what we need to finish the week. Some things we will be able to store at Floyd’s office but obviously nothing perishable. We found that many things we feel necessary were missing from things supplied with the apartment. There are no dishtowels or dishrags, no measuring cups or measuring spoons, no mixing or serving bowls, no paring knives, and nothing I can bake things in the Microwave oven. These are all things we take for granted here in the states. So I will be bringing some things from home and storing them at the office also. You really have to be at a different mindset for this kind of continued travel back and forth as we will be doing. I have to be careful not to wind up storing so much stuff in the office that it starts spilling out in the hallway…LOL.
Floyd visited a potential customer with the dairy team to provide training and technical support. It was a very interesting visit, but not sure if much will come out of it. The dairyman has some very strong ideas of his own. It reminded Floyd of the saying “Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.” After the meeting at the dairy, they went into the small village to have lunch. The place they ate at was a very old building with running water in only one sink. The restroom facilities were out back in an old concrete building. Floyd said they hadn’t even made it to the primitive stage yet. Imagine an outhouse with no internal structures. For lunch he had a variety of things. The specialty was dumplings. There were mushrooms, vegetables, pork, shrimp, donkey, beef, etc. He also had a dish that they called Chinese pizza. It was a mixture of shrimp, mushrooms, cucumbers and carrots mixed in a batter and then fried in a big flat disc like pizza. It was also sliced like pizza. He said it was very good.
Tonight, Floyd stayed in Lai Xie, a village between Yantai and Qingdao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingdao ).
Jan 21, 2009 – today the pollution is really bad as there is no wind to clear out the air so I will be staying inside all day. I took some pictures out the window showing how bad it is. One of the pictures shows the sun as it is setting through the smog…beautiful orange color but not healthy! You can compare the smog pictures with some of the first pictures I took from the apartment to show you the difference. I also took a picture today of one of the odd things you see over here all the time, I opened my window and took a picture down below at the sidewalk. You will notice numerous cars COMPLETELY ON the sidewalk, apparently the building owners sell sidewalk space for parking. Kind of gives a new meaning to the expression “If you don’t like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk!”
This morning Floyd visited a dairy that Cargill owns and did a training session at the farm for the dairy team. He flew home this evening from Qingdao in time to have dinner together.
Jan 22, 2009 – It is kind of bitter sweet today, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Beijing but at the same time I am ready to go home. I spent most of the day organizing and packing everything I could so as to not have to do it all in the morning. It is almost as hard to pack to go home as to come here. The suitcases were definitely lighter though, between eating the food we brought with us and leaving some things here. We wound up with 2 bags of things to leave in Floyd’s office, such as first aid kit and kitchen things.
Floyd finished up this stay in the office, doing reports, tying up loose ends and finalizing everything for the next trip over.
Jan 23, 2009 – we got up early this morning and ate then finished packing. The leasing agent for the apartment came and checked us out early but allowed us to stay until it was time to go to the airport. We just had to turn our keys in to the security guard downstairs when we left. Floyd’s co-worker Wilson picked us up and took us to the Airport. It was interesting fitting 3 people, 4 suitcases, and 2 carryon bags along with the 2 bags that were going to Floyd’s office in his little car, a Volkswagen Jetta! We did it though by stacking some and carrying some in our laps.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened at the airport, just the usual check in procedures before heading out to our gate. The gate agents were quite concerned about our carryon bags for some reason this time though. They kept telling us we would have to check one in at the gate and we kept telling them we had one small carryon and a regular sized one…they just kept fussing over it. It would have been really bad for us to have to check them in. Floyd’s bags were computer bag and his backpack with his work files. Mine were my regular roll on bag which had my computer, my CPAP machine for my sleep apnea and my big camera zoom lens and my backpack which had my camera, my purse and other personal items. We discussed it for a while and they finally let us take them onboard. We were not sure for a short while.
Our flight was uneventful and very long! We watched 2 movies, ate 3 meals and slept for a little over 4 hours and finally made it back to San Francisco. Then the problems started, on International flights (for anyone who does not know) you go through immigration and then you have to claim all your bags to go through Customs to have your luggage all X-rayed again, and then check your bags back in. Then you have to go back through security again before you head to your connecting flight. Well, as luck had it, our flight was a little late getting into San Francisco and our luggage took almost an hour to get onto the carrousel (although almost everyone else had theirs and had left before ours came in) and by the time we finished everything else and got to our gate…you got it WE MISSED OUR CONNECTING flight to Boise. They booked us on the next one but instead of leaving San Francisco at 10:30 in the morning, we were now booked to fly out at 2:30 PM. Just what we wanted to do, sit around the airport for 4 more hours after such a long flight! Then to make bad matters worse, because of weather, almost all the flights were being delayed. We finally got on the airplane headed home at 4:48 PM! That put us in Boise around 6:30 that evening. We started at the Beijing Airport at 11:30 AM their time (which is about 8:30 PM Boise time) the day before and finally got home almost 22 hours later. What an adventure! The ironic thing about the day, we think almost the only flight that went out of San Francisco on time that day was the flight we missed!
It is good to be home and get to see our sweet grandchildren again. It is rather strange to be able to drink out of the faucet again and to be able to rinse my toothbrush with tap water again. It takes a couple days adjustment on both ends of the trip!

NEXT TRIP: Our next trip is March 1st through March 27th. Until then, we hope you enjoy the postings from this trip!