Life in China 2016: A Picture A Day, December 3 – I am back in China and ready to finish my year of “A Picture a Day” up. I’ve posted before about the fact that you don’t drink the tap water here, and that we have bottled water in our home. When I was back in the USA, I enjoyed the ability to get drinks at drinking fountains while out shopping. There are no drinking fountains in China. If you want a drink of water when you are out shopping, you buy a bottle of water. These pictures are from the Hong Kong Airport. Still not regular drinking fountains, but quite fancy “Water Zones.” Leah said the Chinese says “Drinking Water.” They have hot, cold or room temperature water available. The one on the left was from when we left HK; it also has fluid disposal because you can’t take any drinks or filled bottles on the planes, even if you have bought them at the airport! The picture on the right was after we arrived back in HK and were in the area waiting for a ferry to return to mainland China. Here, they even had ice available!
Travel
Part of living as an expat, or officially “expatriate” (a person who lives outside of their native country), is traveling. Leah and I usually make 2 trips a year back to the USA. It’s a long trip! This time, from our China home to our North Carolina home was actually over 2 days, but we spent Thursday night in a hotel and stopped and helped Katelin at work for a few hours. If we had come straight home, it would have been a 30 hour trip. This post is for those readers who DON’T travel :-) The rest of you are plenty familiar with it all! From where we live in China, we had a car take us to a local hotel where, the day before, we had bought a ticket to the Hong Kong Airport. The first van, after stopping at 3 other hotels to pick up people, took us to a shopping Mall in Shenzhen where we switched to another van which crossed the China/Hong Kong border and took us to the airport. Total time to airport was 3 hours. Check in, eat lunch, go through security, take transit train to correct gate area, walk to gate. About 45 mins prior to departure time, they start boarding: Big planes hold a LOT of people, and it takes time to get them on board and settled in! This time we had a 15 hour flight to Dallas Ft. Worth. About 1 ½ hr in, you get a meal, half way through, a snack, and 1 ½ hrs before landing, another meal. In the rest of the time, I usually watch 3 movies, sleep 2-3 hours, read, snack, and get up and use the bathroom and stretch a few times. Once in Dallas, go through immigration, pick up luggage and go through customs, then recheck luggage. Go through security, then head to gate. We had a 4 hr layover so decided to walk to the other terminal to wake-up and stretch. Once in our terminal, we had some dinner (although it really seemed like breakfast time to us!), then headed to our gate. On the way, we stopped to do some Munzee capping (a virtual scavenger hunt type game, always find lots at airports!). 2 ½ hour flight to Charlotte, NC, collect baggage, catch shuttle to hotel, meet up with Katelin and collapse in room! It was still a 2 hr drive home, and was past midnight, thus the reason we decided to stay the night in a hotel before driving home. So, now you understand why we don’t come home more than twice a year! The day we come from China to the USA actually is a 36 hour day for us with the time difference! We travel economy, top pictures are at HK Airport, shows Leah with the entertainment console on seat back in front of you, and bottom pics are at Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport.
