Shanghai to home- Aug. 7, 2016

     At breakfast this morning, we did our highs and lows for the entire trip.

     Julie's high was the boat ride in Guilin and the hotel in Xi'an.  Her low was having to fight the heat the whole time.

     Anna's low was getting sick at the aquarium on the fourth day.  Her highs were climbing the Great Wall, the boat in Guilin, the acrobats in Shanghai, and shopping in Beijing when she bought her bag.

     Emma's highs were shopping at the Silk and Pearl Markets and at the Pearl Museum, and seeing the mountains and caves of Guilin.  Her low was the meat market in Guilin and the first day in Beijing.

     Scott's lows were the first day in Beijing and the last day at Disney because he had wanted them to be so much better and expected so much from them.  His high is looking back in his journal/blog that he's written, the pictures and video that we've taken, and reflecting back on all that we've done on this trip.  When pressed for a single thing that we did that was his favorite, he had to say it was the boat in Guilin.

     We had a leisurely start to the morning.  Scott managed to read all of the new Harry Potter book while we were waiting.

     We left the hotel shortly afternoon.  Amy had helped us by arranging for a van to pick us up.  He was cheaper than a cab would have been but he must have been one of the slowest drivers in China.  There were a lot of lines to go through, but we made it with time to spare and got Burger King for lunch.

     Our plane left a little after 3:00 PM, August 7th.  Of course the time is all screwy when your flying on a jet across the Pacific.  The sun went down early for us, but the sky never really got dark because we were so far north.  By 10:00 PM, Shanghai time, the sun was rising again though we were still over Asia.  At that point, it must have been Aug. 8th, but we would cross the International Dateline somewhere near the pole and end up back on August 7th again.  We landed in Chicago around 4:30 PM-ish, Chicago time.  We had a lot of lines to go through there.  We had to get our bags and put them on different belts, even though U.S. Customs didn't have us do anything else with them at that point.  We watched the sun go down for a second time on August 7th.  We had a one hour and eight minute flight to Buffalo, where we landed at about 11:30 PM, still on August 7th.  We had been on our journey since we left the hotel at noon, but that was 24 hours before our arrival in Buffalo.

     Julie's dad picked us up at the airport.  Julie's mom was at our house with two excited dogs when we got home.  As Scott is typing this, it's evening on August 8th.  We've had a chance to readjust from the jetlag.  Julie and Anna went shopping this morning to get food in the house.  We took a quick trip to the mall to get rid of our remaining Chinese money.  Julie did laundry most of the day, and Scott has worked to get his journal into the blog.  Anna took more than 900 pictures on her Canon camera, so we easily have well over 1900 pictures in all, about 2 hours of video, and a lot of memories.