I am uncertain what time it is. Well, I know its 4:00pm in Denver, and 3:00pm in Los Angeles. I know its 6:00am in Shanghai. But my body… Has no clue how to process this time change. Nicholas and I have had a weird sleep schedule the last few weeks, I’ll write about it here. But it was a perfect plan:

1. Stay up all night until we get on a plane in DEN.
2. Sleep on plane to LAX.
3. Get on plane to China.
4. Sleep the first half of the flight.
5. Be on Shanghai time right when you get there, ready to sleep in 3 hours.

This would have been perfect… but who wants perfect? On our flight from DEN to LAX we were assigned seats right in front of the rear lavatory. If you’ve ever been stuck in these seats you know, of course, that they don’t recline. OK, take two, sleep on plane to China. This could have happened except that there were a hundred little Chinese students surrounding us. To be fair, most of the children were very well behaved. Unless you were the two little boys sitting behind us. They proceeded to jab, and kick and pull our seats as often and as much as possible. Until they fell asleep, I did not sleep at all. Oh why couldn’t they be the sweet girls beside us???

Nick on the other hand slept like a baby and was upset when I woke him for the first meal. Oh well, lucky man.

Besides being completely sleep deprived, our trip into Shanghai was very smooth. We had a lovely last night with our families, full of love and a few tears. We traveled to the airport at 3 am, driven by an Ethiopian man who had kindly woke up early for us. We also saw some friends at the airport. Nick’s bag was 7lbs. overweight but the nice Philipina woman waved us through. 3 checked bags, one guitar and 2 carryon items later….

We found our feet on the ground in China. And our ride was no where to be found. There had been a slight miscommunication with the date of our arrival. And with no international phone, no working ATM cards and no Yuan in our hands we were supposed to make it to a hotel that we couldn’t even read or say the name of. All I have to say is: THANK GOD FOR NICK’S SURVIVAL SKILLS.

His quick thinking and brave “extravert skills” came into focus when he was able to contact the school, and our bank and find food and a taxi for us. We made it to our hotel nearly 5 hours after arriving and it was only because my husband is awesome.

Thanks God for smooth sailing but also thanks for the waves that make it interesting and exciting.