Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

My original schedule read: airport 2:15 (3 kids), airport 4:00 (1 kid), wedding 5:00, airport 10:45 (1 kid). It got changed.

The Chinese kids called their host parents about 1:00 saying they had missed the flight. (One would think that, with a 4 hour layover in Seattle, they would be not only able to go through customs, but be first in line for an overbooked flight. But they weren't.) Unfortunately, English is not their first language, and one host mom understood that they were already at our airport, so she came, didn't find them, and panicked. It wasn't pretty. By the time I got there at about 2:00, the daughter had calmed the mom down and she was functional. The kids had been rescheduled for the 7:30 flight and I met the other kids coming in.

My ace in the hole (husband) was at home waiting by the phone, because I knew that it took longer than 1 hour to go through customs at Salt Lake City and that girl was going to miss her flight and I had said so to the people in charge, but they did not listen. Nor did they pass on this information: ask to be first off the plane, hope there is no line at customs and pray that the plane is not late. Not one single condition was met, and sure enough, she called with her revised flight. (I love being right!) She now comes in at 10:30.

So we went to the wedding on time and even reconnected with a friend from 22 years ago! And then to the airport, where we met 1 Chinese kid (Another overbooked flight) and a host family who wasn't mine. It took forever to get luggage (there is an inverse relationship between plane size and speed to get luggage).

Went home and found out that they wanted to send the other Chinese to an airport that is 2 1/2 hours away, but we prevailed and the boy arrived this morning....to no luggage on the carousel. It had arrived on last night's flight and we picked it up no problem. Plus the host mom, having had a full night's sleep, was much more rational. The 10:30/10:45 pickup was great.

Adding to my not quite sane week: I still have two host families to find and possibly three or four. Oh Well.

The picture is a moth that shared the picnic table with me when I had my morning coffee in the back yard. I like the patterns on his wings.