Day 33 -- Suzhou to Shanghai to Tokyo to Portland and Home

I managed to stay awake all night, occupying my time by catching up on my blog. Daniel tried to stay awake as well, but he crashed at about 3:30am. I woke him up at 4:30am and he, mom, and I were ready to meet the driver to go to the airport by 5:30. I dozed a little bit on the way to the airport and we arrived plenty early for our 9:00am flight. Mom hung around with us for just a bit while we checked in, then we went on through security. No crying for any of us. We know that it is just about a month or so before we will see them again as the job is ending. Mom stuck around a bit longer just to make sure Daniel's fever didn't leave us stranded in Shanghai. All went well, so we all got on our way. After getting through security, we looked for something to eat. Really had no luck there as airports and international terminals just aren't quite what they are in the U.S. Sat down and slept on the oh-so-comfortable seats for a while. Daniel managed to stay awake so we didn't miss our flight to Tokyo. I slept again for about an hour once we got on the plane. That makes a total of about 2 hours of sleep I have gotten betweeen last night and today. Our flight arrived safely in Tokyo and we had some time to kill before heading to Portland. This airport is definitely better than the one in Shanghai as far as food options go, though we weren't particularly hungry after having breakfast on the last flight. We boarded our flight and left Tokyo around 3:15pm. The 9 hour flight ticked by VERY slowly and I never fell asleep again. I really had expected to, but it just didn't happen. The flight was mostly uneventful, which is a good thing. The only thing worth mentioning about it was that the flight staff kind of sucked. For our aisle, the experienced lady was kind of cranky and rude and the seemingly inexperienced lady was a little clumsy and blunt. She accidentally ran over the other lady with the food cart. We arrived in Portland at about 7:30am. Not bad for leaving Shanghai at 9:30am the same day. Daniel's mom picked us up and we went up to his parent's house for the day. I started getting tired on the drive there and decided I couldn't stay up any longer by the time we reached the house. It only took about a minute after I layed down before I fell asleep, thus screwing up my sleep schedule for many days (weeks?) to come. Many hours later, Daniel came in and layed down as well. And several hours after that, we finally woke up in time for dinner. Some hours after that, we finally went home and were awake all night and into the next morning. The 40 hour day is finally over. The trip was awesome and it was really good to get to spend time with Mom & Dad. We covered a lot of ground but also managed to relax and not make it an exhausting vacation. I love being in China and being able to utilize my language skills some. I also love just not being home sometimes. I wasn't ready to come back here, but I think part of it is that I'm not ready to get back to reality. There is so much to do when I get home, but nothing is really pressing except for continuing with the career search of course. We still have to get the house livable again and finish unpacking, sorting, repacking and storing all of our belongings (from our apartment, from the house, and from storage). That's a chore that I look forward to having done, but am not looking forward to doing. As for the career search, it is a downer. It should be this exciting time in figuring out the next step and looking towards new opportunities. However, doing it day in and day out becomes depressing, particularly when I am so frequently reminded that I don't have enough experience. It will all happen and everything will fall into place and my life will return to some semblance of order again, but it's probably going to take a while to get there.