Our return to Hong Kong: a long strange trip

All things must end, even iconoclastic childhood summers at Grandma’s house. After many weeks of sun and fun in the United States, we recently packed our many bags and headed back home to Hong Kong. And to keep things exciting, this trip included one less adult than usual. With Phil in Singapore, the kids and I flew back by ourselves, our first trans- Pacific flight semi-solo.

Despite lots of trepidation on my part, the trip, or at least the part involving the kids, was fine. Though our short connecting flight was delayed, causing us to miss our connection out of San Francisco, this was our only wrinkle. The kids were just super on our long day and on our long flight. With the flights, we tried again the next day and made it to San Francisco with hours and hours to spare. Getting on our Hong Kong flight, we met families with babies on their way to China for the Olympics. I honestly could not get over it. The fact that they were doing that long flight (13.5 hours) willingly was, and is, too much for me to comprehend. (But now that I am out of the airport and in the grip of Hong Kong’s Olympic fever, I can begin to think about it).

Anyway, the kids were great and we made it. It helped having a man (a policeman) that Phil works with and his family directly behind us. Everyone seemed like seasoned travelers as they wheeled their Spiderman and Princess suitcases through airports and flashed their passports at appropriate junctures. Instead of the more typical “are we there yet?,” Tori asked me constantly throughout the trip if we had passed the international date line yet. This question seems to summarize our existence these days. We might not understand it all but we are going the distance.