The return trip

So the whole family is back in Changchun. I flew back to china in the middle of August. It was pretty uneventful and yes I did bring the nutella. In my checked bag.

The funnier part of the story is that my wife and kids came back at the end of august. They didn't bring anything to the US from China cuz they have plenty of clothes at the cottage. So for the trip back to China, they didn't have anything they needed to bring. Except food. So the airline rules allow you to take two 50# bags on international flights plus a carry-on plus a 'purse' independent of how big the passenger is. My 7 year old son has the same weight allowance as my wife (which I know Brook Burg is trying to change so that each passenger pays by the pound since the cost of the flight is a function of the mass being carried, but that will have to wait for a different post). So my wife packed all the kids bags with food. At 5 passengers, that makes 500 pounds of luggage plus 5 carryon bags plus 5 backpacks. Turns out that's a whole lot of food. Our dining room looked like a bomb went off in a grocery store. Granola bars, boxes of cereal, pop tarts, bottles of wine, etc. . . My kids, pack mules.

The best part of the story (for a dutchman like me) is that when dee landed in chicago, she needed to claim the bags and recheck them. (this is not normal, but she didn't have her passport in GR. she was picking it up from a embassy courier in o'hare. Another story for another blog post) So she has to pick up her 500 pounds of luggage and bring it with the 500 pounds of carryon bags to the check in counter. In china, the little baggage carts are free, but in Chicago they cost $4. So instead of getting a cart for every kid, she got one cart and made the kids pull all the bags that didn't fit on the cart. We call it tough love where I come from. Warms the cockles of my dutch heart.