Thanks for visiting us this month on our second visit to China for Stem Cells for Dylan. I will post in a summary of our experiences and Dylan's progress due to the stem cells in a few days. Stay tuned!! Must get unpacked and catch up on sleep! bye for now.

Well this day has finally come!! The driver picked us up in our room at 6am. Sophie, the nurse, helped us downstairs and saw us off. It was a relief to be finally on our way home. The driver took us about 30 minutes into town and found the Shanghai airport bus, loaded up my cases, and I hopped on the bus. This bus took another 3 hours. I was a nice trip through the countryside - through little farm villages and farmers tending to their crops. Most of the crops are mixed. The farmer seems to grow at least 5 crops - one of which is usually rice. The airport bus dropped us off at the departures section. The driver helped unload all of my cases. I had two extra cases. I didn't buy too much but I did buy a walker for Dylan and a little ride-on toy for Connor, so that took up all of that extra space. When I went inside the terminal I was disappointed to find out that they had just identified our flight as delayed! How long?? who knows.. the Air Canada desk would not open for another 2 hours. I lugged the luggage cart and Dylan around the airport in search of a cup of coffee and a comfy place to sit down. I found a place that would work - they sold coffee ($6!) and had chairs...Perfect. At 12 I went to check in to find out that the flight was delayed until 8:15 this evening! (sad face appeared just about now!) The good news was that I was free of the luggage and the cart so I felt a bit more free...but what to do for the next few hours. I walked about and followed the sign to foot massage. The place was packed with passengers that I recognised from the Air Canada line. I ended up getting my feet done as I hadn't had any time during our month in China. The best part was soaked my feet in the hot milky herb bath. What a relief. Well, that killed only about 30 minutes. Unless I want to sign up for the full body treatment I had better find something else to do. I then realised that the Maglev train (magnetic levitation train - for pics see this site http://www.galenfrysinger.com/maglev_train_shanghai_china.htm) originates from the airport. Perfect. I decided to jump on the train and head into Shanghai for a couple of hours. The Maglev is a technological wonder. It travels 43okm/hour and will travel 30km in 8 minutes. There is a digital display in each car that shows speed. It was a thrill to watch the speed climb up to the 430km per hour within a short period of time. The trip is, however, a short one and we arrived in Shanghai. We left the car and jumped into a taxi. I had no idea where exactly to go, but I had read about the shopping on Nanjing road. (Here is a site with lots of pics I just found - http://www.galenfrysinger.com/nanjing_road_shanghai_china.htm)So, that's what I said. He seemed to understand and, within 40 minutes and 7 dollars later...we found ourselves in the centre of Shanghai shopping. It was a shopping overload. I just looked but you could really do some damage there. I could only take a couple of hours in there popping into stores only to benefit from their air-conditioning!!! At the end, I grabbed another taxi to the Maglev train terminal. Once back at the airport, we grabbed dinner and it was soon time to get on the plane. We did it. We ended getting the bulk head seats (lots of foot room) all to ourselves as the plane was only half full. Dylan was sleepy (thankfully) and spent a lot of the time in that state. The flight attendant gave me a sleep mask that I put on him and he wasn't disturbed by the light of the large TV in front of us. I make it a point not to watch the clock ticking down as it seems to slow down time for me. Well, the time flew by and we had landed in Toronto. I was much later than we had planned but we were finally home.