We took a taxi to go to Hong Kong airport. Our flight was 12 hrs. We bought Nathan his own seat on the plane instead of a lap ticket since it was a long flight. But most of the time, he slept on my lap. He was fussy once in a while but we were surprised he slept most of the time on the plane.
Our seats were at the back of the plane. We purposely chose the back seats so that whenever he gets fussy while sitting, there was a place for us to carry him at the back of the plane to try to calm him down. When I carried him to the back of the plane near the rear exit doors, it was hard to put him to sleep at first because he would constantly look at people whenever they pass by. In order to make him sleep, I turned my body around so that he doesn’t get distracted with people passing by. I was glad that he eventually fell asleep quickly because my arms were getting tired of carrying him! When I slowly sat back on my seat, luckily he didn’t wake up.
He didn’t wake up until 2 hrs before we landed. After he woke up, we played around with him and gave him food.
We finally landed at SFO airport a little past 10am. We had to go through customs. There was this guy directing people which line to go to. There were three different lines: visitors, US Citizen and new immigrants. Since Nelson and I are US Citizens, we went to the US Citizen line first. Then this agent told us to go to the new immigrant line to show Nathan’s sealed documents.
When we went to the new immigrant line, this agent at the new immigrant booth gave my husband a blank application. When the agent came out of the booth, I thought he wanted to look at Nathan since we showed him Nathan’s Chinese passport. Instead, the agent said ‘you guys gotta move out of the way’. I thought he was rude especially the way he said it. I told Nelson that he should have said ‘Excuse me’. How were we suppose to know what he wanted us to do? He thinks we read minds? There were about 5 people waiting at the new immigrant line. In my opinion, this rude egotistic prick (excuse my language) made everyone wait behind the new immigrant line for a long time on purpose. He kept helping people at the US Citizen line even though there were at least 5 – 7 other agents helping those people already. There were at least 200 people waiting both at the visitors and US citizen line. Until all 200 people have gone, this other agent asked the prick when he will help the people waiting at the new immigrant line. Finally this prick made his booth available for us. When another agent saw Nelson fill out the blank application, this agent told us that he didn’t have to fill it out. Then this prick told his friend ‘oh dude, he filled it out??’ The prick made us look stupid. I told this agent that the prick didn’t give us specific instructions on what to do. Since this prick gave us a blank application, of course the first thing we automatically thought was to fill it out while we waited behind the new immigrant line. Plus, I didn’t like how another agent was treating other people waiting in line. This agent’s job was to direct people at the correct line and he was very rude. With a harsh tone of voice, he said things like ‘hey, go to this line!…. you listening to me?’ Just because they wear that badge and a gun doesn’t give them the right to disrespect other people. Luckily we didn’t have to go back to that prick’s booth. Another agent kindly helped us.
Nelson’s brother picked us up at the airport and we had lunch at my in-law’s house. Nelson’s sister, her husband and my 1 year old niece were there too to meet Nathan.
My father-in-law took lots of pictures of Nathan and Selena (my niece) playing together. Even after a long flight home, Nathan wasn’t too tired too play with Selena’s toys. Before we went went, Nelson’s mom gave Nathan a nice warm bath.
When we got home, we were surprised to see a ‘Welcome Home’ sign hanging inside our garage. Inside our house, we were surprised again to see lots of balloons and other decorations. There was a gift on the kitchen table. It was a gift from the Alvarez family. Neftali Alvarez is Nelson’s coworker at Pixar and he was the one who took care of our cat Smeagol. It was very nice of the Alvarez family to welcome us back home and we thank them for their support.
Nathan inside his crib playing with Mickey Mouse
Before going to bed, my mom called me and talked for a bit about Nathan. Afterwards, it was finally time for us to rest and sleep.