Saturday, December 30, 2017

Chasing Santa - a really long Christmas Eve

It's currently Saturday evening and I have just finished packing my bags to go back to Beijing. I can't say I'm really looking forward to the return trip, but the time differences always make things interesting. This trip, I'm departing on the morning of New Year's Eve and flying west. As I fly west the time will get earlier and earlier until I cross the International Dateline at which point it will become 2018. There won't exactly be a countdown for the new year. Of course, this is sort of making up for my trip from Beijing to North Carolina.
I woke up on Christmas Eve morning and went to church. We had a good service and then went to the home of a couple of the church members who live very close to where we meet (in the German Center). We had an awesome church-wide Christmas party which included having pizza and snacks and singing Christmas songs. I left about 2:30 in the afternoon (the party was still going strong) and took the train (the subway to the airport express) to the airport. I flew to Detroit landing about 10 minutes BEFORE I left Beijing. (I called my grandmother from the Detroit airport. She mentioned that you can't be in two places at the same time and I replied, "Oh, yes you can. I was in Beijing on Sunday, December 24, 2017 at 5:40 pm and I was in Detroit on Sunday, December 24, 2017.")
My flight to Detroit was pretty good. After I checked into the airport, they told me that I could go over to the table that said Merry Christmas and get some Christmas items (It was actually kind of funny because the check-in was conducted mostly in Chinese and so he told me this in Chinese with Merry Christmas being in English because the table had an English banner which said Merry Christmas). I walked over to the table and saw that they had headbands with antlers, santas, and other possible items on them; slap bracelets; and buttons. I chose a really cute antler headband with a bow between the antlers. Then the woman was like, "Oh chose something else." I was surprised that I could have more than one item, but I chose a reindeer slap bracelet. Then she told me to get a button so I got a stocking button. The conversation with this woman started in English, but out of habit, a number of my replies were in Chinese and eventually the conversation turned to Chinese. I don't know if it was because of my Chinese speaking or being a foreigner or what, but next thing I know she's asking to take a picture of me.
When I boarded my flight, the flight attendants all had different Christmas headbands like what I had seen on the table (it was a Delta table and I was flying Delta after all), but none of them had one just like mine. They all reacted instantly to my headband, asking me where I got it and commenting that they hadn't seen one like that. There were additional comments as I deplaned as well. I was a little surprised to see that nobody in Detroit had any of these acutraments. I thought they were probably a Delta-wide thing, but apparently they were in a Delta in Beijing thing.
My flight to Greensboro was delayed a bit because of back-up on the de-icing which was the result of weather systems delaying other flights, but when we boarded the flight attendant was like, "We've got to get you all home before Santa arrives." I managed to land in Greensboro at about 11 pm and made it to Mom and Dad's house about 10 minutes before midnight. My Christmas Eve was 37 hours long and I definitely made the most of it. On Monday, I kept telling stories from the day before and my dad was like, "Your yesterday was a week long." It definitely felt like it. This Sunday however, I am essentially skipping.

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