Today's Update

We are up at 4:30 am to get ready for the ride to the airport. Frannie was nice enough to wake me up early for our early wake-up call! We spent the day yesterday walking down to the Bund via the famous Nanjing Street shopping area. Funny how a claustrophobic person who hates crowds was stupid enough to choose this city for leisure. By the time the 10th person came up to us, shoving a pamphlet for watches in our faces, I wanted to kung fu him or her. I did manage to find some men's shorts to buy and some cheap t-shirts for the time being.

To explain about the bag (mostly for the sake of my husband, who I am sure is thinking something like "I bet she left it on a curb and drove away."): We got through customs, went to the luggage turnstyle where Nancy was waiting for us with 3 of our bags already. I went to get two trolleys for the trip outside. By the time I got back, Nancy had gotten all of her bags and started stacking them on one of the trolleys. I saw a red bag that I thought might be mine so I picked it up and realized it was much dirtier than mine so I put it back. Right after that I saw my other bags and the stroller so I grabbed those and Nancy continued to stack them all on the trolley. I turned back and saw another red one and thought to myself "that one looks much cleaner' and grabbed it. We went out the front of the airport to the long taxi line and walked to the front where a guy with a clipboard met us and asked us where we were going. He and the taxidriver spent about 5 minutes packing and repacking all of these bags into a car about the size of a Camry. The picture of Frannie on Nancy's lap shows the tight fit with the suitcases next to them. We got to the hotel, watched the bellboys unload and went up to the room. No red bag. We talked incessantly about the order of that -- how I remembered very clearly grabbing that clean red bag and in what order the bags were stacked in the taxi. The hotel people even looked at their surveillance cameras for us to see how many bags were taken out of the taxi. We counted 9 at the airport and 8 were taken out of the taxi.

Okay, so on to happier things: we are leaving here in a few minutes to head closer to Gracie. We will write when we arrive and have lots of good news!