Planes, trains, and people movers

We arrived in Hong Kong late last night, and now are about 24 hours away from meeting baby Hannah. Our trip was interesting, made a little more challenging due to my, um, germ phobias and the other flight passengers who were very reluctant to trade their desirable aisle or window seats. More on that later. As we stood in the airports, I saw thousands and thousands of people from all over the world. And the girls, in their excitement, must have checked out every single bathroom in every single airport. Touched every single counter or railing we approached. And, I later witnessed nail biting and hands in mouth while in airports. Oh.My. It was enough to almost bring on angina. No amount of purell I gave them was enough, since they would go right back to touching everything in site in each airport. Next time? I am going require gloves for all of them. This might generate even more stares and open mouth postures from people as they watch a Caucasian mother with three beautiful Asian girls. Just wait until I have 4 little girls with me. I can only imagine . Our airport experiences were complicated by delays in each phase of our travel. We boarded the plane at Logan, only to taxi out and hear the engines become quiet. Not a good sign. Pilot comes on and says that despite the weather being perfect from flying in both Boston and Newark (our destination layover before flying to Hong Kong), we were required to wait. Maybe too many other planes. Didn't matter. Waited on runway for over 30 minutes. Arrived in Newark, and found our gate, only to be told that our plane went to a different terminal, and would be delayed from taking off. Ah, now looking at about 26 hours of travel. I could see the fear in my fellow passengers' face as they watched my children practicing dance moves, gymnastic tricks, and riding the people mover as if it were an amusement ride, wondering who would be the lucky ones to sit next to them. See, the flight was VERY full, and NONE of our seats were together. Not one. All middle seats. I asked at the customer service desk to try to place us at least near each other. No luck. Full flight we were told. Asked the flight attendants. No luck full flight. Said one of my kids might get motion sickness. Still no luck. We all took our assigned seats. Finally a window of hope! Flight attendants saw the look of panic upon the faces of my children and started offering "extras" if they would move to allow 2 to sit together, and then the other 3. One man said he would move if he got the 2 seater. Done said flight attendant. One was promised extra snacks. Done. Another passenger said she would take my undesirable middle seat so I could at least be diagonally across. It didn't need to happen because as the final passenger got onto the flight and saw his seat occupied by a little one, said "this family needs to stay together, I will move". Thank you God. Finally, we are ready to take off, or so we all thought. But, no taxi-ing. No movement. Pilot comes onto say that a passenger for our flight did not pass immigration, and they needed to open the plane back up to get that person's luggage out. I couldn't make this up, even if I wanted to. After another hour or so, we were off. I think our pilot was speeding, because we still made it to Hong Kong only an hour after original landing time. By that point, we were all feeling like it was morning and not evening, as it was in Hong Kong. We took the airtrain to immigration, had temperature checks (and passed, phew, after all of that hand in mouth behavior), and went to baggage claim to see all of our luggage. Hooray! We have clean clothes! We got into our hotel to find two oversized beds in our room, giving a much more enjoyable sleep than the sleep on the plane packaged as sardines. Maybe the word "sleep" isn't quite the word to use. Naps, more like it. So, we have all napped off and on for the past 12 hours and are ready to go. We will meet some friends here to swim today, and head out late afternoon to fly to Nanning. I actually can't believe that it is almost here. But soon it will be, and baby Hannah will join our crazy family, and likely be following right along in her big sisters' footsteps.