Home Again Home Again, Jiggety Jig

 Tom was all alone in the middle of China on a business trip when his sweet Mom passed away.  But for the Chinese it was business as usual with not much more than a word or two of condolence.  Tom had to go to the ribbon cutting of another company and be the eye candy for Waston to show off their foreign employee.  A death in the family did not trump that.  So he showed off for them with a very heavy heart.  He didn't return to us for more than 24 hours.  I was as sad for him to be alone as I was to have his Mom leave us.  

We frantically bought tickets and made arrangements to be back for the funeral.  Thankfully conditions here were such that we could actually make it back into China if we left (that wasn't the case when we came).  It was such a crazy tight time frame and we threw things together haphazardly.  We knew we would have to quarantine upon return, but we didn't have much time to put much thought into that.

We were running so far behind schedule that Jacky had to come and help us with final packing.  That was super helpful.  Then he went with us to Shanghai since he knew where to go for testing and all that needed to be done so we didn't have problems being outside of our city. (Travel within China is a headache because of the zero Covid policy and even traveling outside of your city is complicated.) We especially appreciated him taking such good care of us in Shanghai--showing us such a good time for the evening before our flights.  He put us in a delightful hotel, took us to a nice park, bought us our favorite treats and took us to a lovely place for dinner.  Completely spoiled us.  

We had to leave for the airport at 4:00am and he instructed Wangjian to not only drive us to the airport but to ensure that we got inside at the right place.  Jacky seems to understand how difficult it is for foreigners here.  And thankfully it was all without incident.

So without hardly knowing what had happened to us, we were back in the United States!  With the death, the jet lag, the lack of any sort of plans for our stay, no return tickets, we felt like we had been hit by a train. All very surreal.  Thankfully we came back to life a bit so we could enjoy our time there!  It was good to be back 😊!