The best laid plans of mice and men

Well after all of the teary farewells and the last minute running around to get to the Canberra airport on time it was mother nature that had the final say. The biggest rain storm in some months came through once during our final farewells at Amy's parents house, and then made an encore showing 1/2hr before our flight was scheduled to leave Canberra (check out the water on the tarmac from the huge deluge). This led to us landing in Sydney at the same time as our plane to Singapore was taxiing down the runway and taking off - Zai jian! The result of all this is that we are doing this update from the hotel room at the Sydney Stamford near the airport, after we were put on a new flight at 8.10am tomorrow.

The positive thing to come out of this was that we managed to catch up with Reece's parents and brother + partner at the airport for a longer time than first thought, which was great (apart from the huge parking bills the parents received from driving between domestic and international terminals looking for us). The negatives include a now daytime flight to Beijing (14hrs of "Are we there YET?"), and the fact that we are sans baggage which is currently floating around the Sydney airport and on their way to Beijing without us.

With all (revised) things going to plan we should be touching down in Beijing around 11pm tomorrow night (Sunday), which will make for a tiring day on Monday as we have a full day of orientation ahead of us.

For those we haven't talked to in person, have a happy and safe new year.