story20642.xml

story20642.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-11

It was approxiamtely 9:30pm in Shanghai China. I joined my husband on a furniture buying trip. We were traveling with his business partner and his wife, and 3 other gentlemen from Florida who were doing their own furniture research. We all had a lovely dinner together, and decided to go to the lobby bar at our hotel, the Shanghai Hilton, for a nightcap. The men stayed in the bar, and I decided to go up to my room to get ready for bed. As I sat down on the bed with a furniture brochure, I turned on the television, just for news. There was not alot of entertainment on Chinese TV. Mostly, it consisted of news in various languages. I glanced up at the tv and noticed a "LIVE" message in the left hand corner of the picture. Just as I noticed it, I saw the plane hit the building. Initially the building did not look familiar to me, and I thought, "what kind of bad movie is this??" I really did not pay too much attention, because I did not believe it was for real. And then I saw the second plane hit another building. It caught my attention, but I still was not sure where this was happening. Just then,my husband walked into the room. He said, "Are you watching what is going on?" I said I saw it but I didn't think it was for real. We sat together and began to watch with terror as information began to filter into our thoughts. It was New York! Oh my God! My cousin lives in Manhattan and works somewhere in a tall building. My daughter's college roommate works for Bloomberg. Is she in that building?? Our hotel room turned icy cold, and I could not stop shaking. They were reporting that the Pentagon had just been hit and another plane may be hijacked. Where were my children? Was my 7 year old granddaughter watching this horror? How I yearned to put my arms around them right then. My brother.....he was to fly to Germany today with his partner. We just had dinner with his partner 2 days earlier in Shanghai. I know he was flying back to the states.....where was he meeting my brother?? I was shaking so badly I could not talk, I ached all over. I was crying uncontrollably. I MUST CALL THE U.S and talk to my family. First I called my aunt to see if she heard from my cousin. Yes, she said, he was safe. I called my brother, and he answered the phone...I felt so relieved when he said he had cancelled his trip. Of course, they had not yet grounded all aircraft. The I called my daughter in Arizona, and my son in California. They were stunned and worried. We will try to get back home as soon as possible, but my daughter said if anyone on the flight looks suspicious, just get off the plane. I assured her we would be fine. We called my in-laws to let them know we were alright and would keep them informed. I felt somewhat relieved after talking to everyone but like everyone else, did not know of what was yet to come. For the next few hours, we watched the horror on the screen in disbelief. We felt so isolated, and guilty for not being in the US when this was happening to our country. We didn't know if we were getting all the news. We tried to go to sleep at about 1am, which was 1pm New York time. We dozed for a few hours and at 4am, we both lay in the bed wondering what was happening back home. We turned on the tv and watched! That was all we could do. And prayed...

The next morning we were to meet our buying agent at 8:30am. We got ready, and met her in the lobby. She expressed her condolences to us, and we proceeded to go to our business appointments. After 2 hours, we decided we could no longer keep our thoughts on business and asked her to return us to our hotel. The Hilton in Shanghai had televisons all over the lobby and restaurants for all of their guests to bond together in this tramatic moment. There were many American tour groups coming and going, and for their convenience and the convenience of the independent travelers, blackboards were posted in the lobby with pertinent flight information on it. The managers of the hotel made themselves readily available to all of the stranded guests for anything we might need, and told us we could stay as long as necessary. Throughout the day, the hotel delivered to our rooms no less than 5 english newspapers for us to read. We read every article, looked at every picture, and I brought every one of those newspapers home with me!

For the next few days, we pretty much stayed in the hotel most of the time. We couldn't leave the television sets, and really did not feel comfortable walking around Shanghai at this time. The Chinese people were absolutely wonderful during this time, but the hotel was our comfort zone right now. I checked my e-mail every few hours, and of course updated our friends and family often. Like everyone else, we had no idea when we would get home. We were to fly home Saturday September 15th from Shanghai, thru Seoul and Los Angeles. On Friday we went to the Asiana city ticket office to get an idea on how we might get home and when. We were told they had not received clearance to fly yet, but would call us Saturday morning with an update. At this time though, with 4 days worth of passengers built up, they estimated we would get into Los Angeles maybe Wednesday, and possibly we could re-route to Seattle on Monday. Right now, we had to wait it out.

Saturday morning we got called at 8:30 am to be told they still had no clearance to leave. During the conversation though, work came that they would fly later in the day. I thanked them and gathered my friends as we decided to chance our return.

We arrived at Shanghai airport at 1pm. The ticket counters were masses of Chinese going about their business as usual. There was no line, just people. We finally got to the counter, gave them our tickets, and they checked our bags to Los Angeles. They didn't search our bags or ask us any questions. No security.....a bit scary. We boarded our flight to Seoul, and realized we had no boarding passes to the US. We would have to hope that the ticket counters in Seoul were not masses of people. Fortunately, they were not. We received our boarding passes and felt so relieved. We were going home! I ran up to the business class lounge to send one last e-mail....WE ARE COMING HOME TODAY! We boarded the half empty flight and felt so fortunate.....

September 15th, 3:30pm we landed in Los Angeles. Security was very different from that of 6 months earlier, when we also returned from China. I believe our passports were checked no less than 5 times before we even left the Bradley International Terminal. We could not check our bags in for our connecting flight to Phoenix. We would have to take them to Terminal 1, America West. Everywhere we looked there were armed police officers with rifles, police dogs and police cars. There was no traffice driving thru LAX...how strange. The masses of people were not there. Only the few passengers who were lucky enough to get on the few flights that day. We walked our luggage carts all thru the passage to terminal 1, and proceeded to check into America West. The counter person told us that check-in was serious business and not to say anything that wasn't asked. We complied, and proceeded to go to the gates. Once again, we had to go thru security 2 more times, and finally we could go to the gate. At that time I bought my first American newspaper...USA Today. I read it cover to cover. How eery...this terminal is usually packed with people. Today it is deserted! Our flight was uneventful. We landed in Phoenix to find the airport also deserted, but happy to be home.

For the next few days, I tried to catch up on what we missed. I don;t think that will ever happen. Each special show on television shows us events we had not yet seen. And I cry all over again!! My daughter told me how strange it was to not hear airplanes in the sky. I wanted to know what my granddaughter felt. To this day, I still feel badly that I was not at home for this national tragedy.