Leaving SFO and on our way to Taipei, Taiwan
After meeting the entire group at the baggage check in at SFO China Airways we got in line to get our assigned seats. Ms. Chen had Ty and me go with her group and we discovered that not one of us where seated next to each other. We are in same section, but ten rows apart. Luckily we each have an aisle seat. I tried to ask the flight attendant to help me get us closer together and she asked the woman in front of me who quickly declined and started complaining “Why am I playing musical chairs?” I tried to explain it was because I had a young boy that was sitting alone and I wanted to sit next to me. She said, NO. Very matter of factly and then went on to say how she was assigned her seat and she paid for it, blah, blah blah. I then thought strategically if she could change seats with me (one seat behind her) I could ask the guy in the middle seat to switch with Ty, but she even refused to change seats with me. She said it was because I was the back row and my seat would not recline. I showed her that it did recline just like hers. She said, NO. It was too bad the airlines couldn’t get us together but a child could sit by himself, because she did when she was younger. She obviously is not a Mother ;-( Turns out she hasn’t even reclined her chair yet and we’ve been flying for 7 hours!
Aidan
I have been assigned to take care of Aidan. He is a Freshman and in Ty’s Mandarin 1 class. There are other kids who are in Mandarin 3/4. Aidan is very nice, went to Berkeley Montessori School. Thought Ty looked familiar, but we couldn’t figure it out.
I still don’t know if Ty will be in my hotel room or if Aidan will be with us. There are 7 Chaperone and 14 students. We wont be meeting up with the other school from Sacramento because they went on the same trip a week earlier.
Ty knows two other students on this trip: Simone and Lilly. Lilly is friends with Shira. Simone may know Ty from King? Simone and Aidan are good friends. Ty is fitting in with the group and socializing. Someone brought an enormous bag of candy (Sour Patch) so Ty is best friends with that person for the moment ;-)
China Airlines
Inflight Movies are in abundance. Everyone has there on screen the size of my laptop’s screen. Ty is perfectly happy to be by himself. We’ve been flying for 7 hours, and Ty has already seen two movies! he says he slept for a couple of hours. After the completion of my flight I saw 3.5 movies (Steve Jobs, Stephen Watkins, The Martian and Brooklyn)
We were served a meal at 2am. Fish Curry and rice with green salad and fruit salad. It came with a bottle of water and when the drink cart came by I asked for water and the flight attendant showed me that I had water and I said, “but I would like more water” and she said, Oh! and served me some “warm” water! The language is really hard for me! I don’t understand anything. Ty is understanding everything!
Pen Pal (Enter name here)
Ty was assigned a Pen Pal. Ms. Chen asked him (in Chinese of course, she doesn’t speak to the students in English) if he had texted her yet. Ty had not! and then Ms. Chen seemed confused why I didn’t know that the Pen Pal was living in Taiwan and Ty would get to meet her. I explained that he hadn’t told me too much and even thought my idea of buying her a small gift wasn’t a good idea. Well it turns out everyone was supposed to buy a gift for their pen pal! We bought a small magnet and key chain with the Golden Gate Bridge and the New Bay Bridge (and a piece of Ghirardelli chocolate).
Taipei Airport Entertainment
Airport Entertainment
