The Zhao Family

2015-06 Trip to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - Day 1&2 - Going to TaiShan, "HehnLiuh" or TianChou

While the epidemic in S. Korea changed our plans slightly, we didn't want to book a hotel in Korea to sleep overnight and we couldn't have any place for a short stay in HK since we're taking the bus to take us to China the next morning. Due to this rescheduling, Abbey says she's not staying at the airport so she decided to take the kids with her to go to parent's house to sleep while I stayed with my parents and sisters family at the airport after we landed around 10pm.

The HK airport has a totally different area for buses to connect to TaiShan and since we arrived so late, it was quite empty. The seven of us made the best out of the situation since the adults couldn't sleep but my sisters kids couldn't stay up anymore. I walked around to see what's in that area of the airport since our bus doesn't arrive until 7am. That was short lived, then we played card games for many hours. We were loud and we didn't care since there was practically no one in that section of the airport.

The next morning the bus came and the driver was very nice. He talked to us the whole hour while he was driving and coached us what to do at the border to leave HK and then like 100 yards away the border to enter China. He was very organized, professional, and knew exactly what to do and did everything for us which made it very easy for us. We then switched buses since he was the driver for HK side, we had to get on another bus for TaiShan for the rest of the three hour ride.

When we arrived at the main bus station we were picked up by the cousin that went back to TaiShan early Xing Go and mom's nephew Hung Go. There we split once more, mom and dad went with Hung Go so dad can go see a dentist to get his teeth fixed or have dentures while Xing Go would pick the rest of us up to go to the hotel.

2015-06 Trip to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - The plane ride

After rushing out of Brennan's 5th grade promotion/graduation (read post here), we made it to the airport on time!

It all started when Abbey want to go back to Hong Kong to see her parents. She wanted me to go back with her. We told my parents and they tagged along stating they want to go back to China too since they haven't gone back to their hometown in 18 years. When Cindy's mom heard this, she wanted to go back to see her friends and family too and then her older son that he wanted to join in our trip. So back in January when Abbey was looking at tickets, she found good prices to go back in the summer and purchased it for nine people! Within days when my sister heard we were going back to Hong Kong and China, she wanted in so she asked Abbey to get tickets for her and her two kids too. So now we're traveling with twelve people!

After booking the tickets we realized that many of us needed to get new passports; that was the easy part. Send it in, pay the fee; done. Then the more difficult part was getting the visas for China which someone has to go in person. It would be simple just for my family except that I am doing it for my family, my parents and my sister's family. The other cousins are Green card holders so they don't need visas. So I had to get every single person to fill out the visa application which is seven pages long along with a invitation letter from a relative in China. It took sometime to fill out forms for five people while my sister fill out for my parents and her three while my mom was able to get an invitation letter from her nephew in China. After gather all the paperwork including from my sister, made copies of EVERYTHING listed such as passports and itineraries I went through to make sure that all paperwork look make sure everything is in order before going to the Chinese embassy the next morning. Then I noticed all the paperwork my sister filled out was hand written even tough on the top of the form stating it needs to be typed. So I had to retyped all the forms for all five people and check that all the names, relative names, addresses, birthday, and significant information are correct which took literally until 2am. Then comes the hardest part: I had to get all the signatures the next morning before going to the embassy around 7:30am. It was a working school day which means I have to find a way to tell my sister early in the morning that I need her three signatures and wake up my parents so they can sign it and I won't leave to late to be stuck in traffic going into DC.

I called everyone early in the morning and met my sister at her work and stopped by my parents for signatures. I got to the embassy around 9:30ish and there was already 72 people ahead of me in the queue. I was planning to go back to work around 11, but so much for that. It was a long and nervous wait then my number finally came up and I went up the window to the lady and she saw the big pouch of paperwork with me. I can see her expression changed but I figured I have all the paperwork and I just hand everything to her and pay the fee and go: that was not the case. After looking at just two applications, she said I need photocopies of something for all applicants (don't remember what it was) and I should head upstairs to copy them and come back to her. OK, I didn't think it was that difficult. I went up to make copies and I was shocked to know that each copy was fifty cents! For ten applicants and each having several copies, it was several dollars for a few sheets of paper! Anyways I went back downstairs to give her the copies and she took me without having waiting in the line again to look over all the paperwork. My mom and dad's passport was OK, then she said that because my sister and I are naturalized citizens we need to have our old Chinese passports and we need to have my marriage certificates which I did not have any of those paperwork. I was crushed waiting nearly two hours and running to make copies for her to tell me that.

I went back next week with all the paperwork that was asked and I even went to the embassy early, I was the thirteenth person there lining up outside waiting for the doors to open. I was ready. Lucky me, I had the same lady and she remembered me! She went through all the applications again and was mumbling but finished processing my family's passports. She then ask why my sister didn't come to the embassy to apply for her family because of my sister's name change, they also need a copy of her name change certificate and her husband's passport along with a copy of it too which I didn't have. I was like, 'I am done, I had enough of this.' I left with a satisfaction that I have my parents and my family's visas processed. I called my sister that I went there twice for her and they still need more documents from her, she'll have to go on her own next time to complete her application and whatever forms they need. So she had her husband to go to the embassy to finish her visa application.

After that, everything was in order and we were ready to go!

Then one of the cousins lost his job and he wanted to leave earlier for China. It was in April and Abbey was busy doing taxes for her work so I had to call up the airline to change his itinerary. After working my magic I was able to change his itinerary so he can leave earlier and come back with us on the same time for a penalty of just ten dollars, instead of four hundred dollars. That was done, he was happy.

One note that I should mention is that the week before we were about to depart for our trip, Korea had an outbreak of MERS, which is a very contagious deadly respiratory airborne infection. The entire country of South Korea was on a lock down pretty much. They closed hundreds of schools and quarantined hundreds of people that tested positive for the infection. We panicked since we were taking Korean Airlines and having 16 hour layover there. We planned to leave the airport to go to stay overnight at a and then go to Hong Kong then to China via bus from the HK airport. Well with the whole MERS situation we called the hotel to cancel and changed our flights not to stay in Korea that long. Fortunately these companies understand the severity and urgency so we were able to cancel the hotel and changed our flight to leave Korea early without any problems and no penalties.

The gang departing Dulles Airport

Kids first ride on their underground rail

Flying KoreanAir and the kids already know what to do with the built in TVs

even do homework while on the plane ride

Korean and MERS...a little detour and everyone must wear masks

It was cool they have a re-enactment of a Korean wedding while going to another part of the airport

And we arrive in Hong Kong

Brennan's 5th grade 'Promotion"

Brennan finally graduated from Fox Chapel Elementary School fifth grade class. The school calls it "Promotion". Anyways, that was a very interesting day since that's also the day we booked our airline tickets to fly back to Hong Kong, way back in January.

So apparently what happened was that the original last day of school was on June 12th but due to school snow days, Montgomery County added three days at the end of the school year. Then the teachers protested to have all the snow days removed, however only 2 of the 3 days were approved to be removed which means that the last day of school is on Monday June 15th. That is also the day of Brennan's class promotion which made things very difficult for our flight out of the country. Other elementary schools had their promotion on Friday June 12th!

The departure time for the airplane is at 1:30pm but we have to be at the airport two hours early for international flights at 11:30am and takes about an hour to get to the airport which means we need to leave at 10:30am. His fifth grade promotion starts at 9:00am and he happens to be the last child of the last class (due to Zhao last name and his teacher's last name Mr.Wells) out of six classes.

The timing was too tight so we told Brennan he has two choices: either skip his promotion or if he wants to go really bad he needs to email his teacher to see if they can place him in the front so we can leave right away. He wanted to go to his promotion, so he emailed his teacher. He said he can not anything about the arrangement of the students and would need to talk to the PTA. So we help Brennan pursue that avenue and he email them. They said they can not do that. Since Brennan is already doing his part to be in the promotion, we didn't let him stop there. So we told him to email the school principal what can be done. The principal approved! Since they don't want to put Brennan in another class when the names are called, they placed his entire class to be the first set of names to be called but he would still be the last person. We were ecstatic!

The day of the promotion was very interesting. Of course it starts the day raining. We arrived at the school 40 minutes so we can get the very back seats first to leave immediately when Brennan walks past the stage. We were anxiously waiting for the program to start on time and of course it does not, it started 15 minutes late! I was sweating that we might make it to the airport on time.

There's a good part to this. While all the people were going in to take photos, I stood in the back of the auditorium on the chair with my long lens to take photos. Then the school auditorium staff told me that I can't do that. Then five minutes later that same person came to me and told me to follow him. I wasn't sure where he was leading me but I followed. He took me to the control room which is one floor up and I can see the entire stage without anyone blocking the view! It was an awesome place to take photos. So that's the good part.

Meanwhile in my heart I was rushing the people to get to name calling so we can leave, but nope. They started with the entire class singing, then some more singing, then they had a couple musical pieces, finally the principal gave her speech. It was getting close to 10:30 and then that was not the end of it ,two more teachers talked. I was panicking!

Finally they start calling names. But it was not like everyone was rehearsed and they were very continuous; it was get up to go up there, the person will try to pronounce the name, then the student would walk 10 steps into the stage to stop to face the audience, and of course everyone claps. This means that there's a long wait until the next student is called. It took forever, about 15 minutes, before they get to Brennan.

Once I took his photo walking through the stage, I ran back to the entrance to meet the rest of the family to run to the van. We rushed to the airport from 10:50am and got to the airport at 11:30am while my parents and sister's family were waiting for us. It certainly was a lot of adrenaline going through the entire event but glad we all made it to the airport safely and on time.

Congratulations Brennan on your 'promotion' !