It’s time to head back to Beijing. Originally our flight was scheduled for 8:30 am, when I booked it in August. However, I found out yesterday when I began to check-in online that it had been changed, and we now had a 6:00 am departure. That means arriving at DFW airport by 4:00 am, so we left our condo around 3:15 am. We picked up Brad on the way (he now lives just down the street about 2 miles).

We arrive at 4:00 and begin checking our luggage. We took a lot of time last night (very late) to adjust our luggage and make sure both pieces were at 50lbs. or below. My trusty luggage scale has never been wrong, but it was today. Both pieces were slightly over 51 lbs. Darn! We move to the side and move stuff from one bag to the other to make sure at least one of our bags was underweight, and then moved stuff out of our backpacks and carry-on bags we were carrying to try and help the weight problem. We finally got checked in and moved to security. TSA-Pre definitely helps. I only had to remove my shoes going through.

We grab some breakfast while we wait. The plane boards and departs on time. Heavy headwinds make our San Francisco arrival late, but we have a long layover. We find a place to eat some lunch, and kill time until we are able to board our Beijing bound plane. There are lots of empty seats and we get to spread out. Judy has a row of 3 seats by herself, and I have four seats together by myself. It’s not “first class”, but almost.

We arrive in Beijing around 4:30 pm (Wednesday). Man, it’s a long flight, about 12 hours on this leg. The luggage is on the carousel when we get through immigration and we make our way to the taxi area. There’s a long line of people, but there are a lot of taxis. 30 minutes later, we’re walking into our apartment. It’s a great feeling to back “home”. We unpack a little, but we’re both really beat. It’s 6:30 pm on New Years Eve, and we’re headed for bed! I don’t even know if there is any kind of a New Years celebration in town, and I don’t really care.