Back to Blogging

It's been almost 7 weeks since I last posted a blog. I am actually still here in China, but I've been so busy lately that I've hardly had time to do anything at all, let alone writing blog posts.

At the end of June I left China for one whole glorious month. I was getting to the point where I needed to get the heck out of dodge for a while. I was miserable here for various reasons that finally culminated in an ultimatum to my boss... send me home for a while, or I'm done. If I had had to stay in Yantai for another 2 days, I would have blown a gasket.

My last night here, I invited my friends Jack and Ben over to my house to hang out. They were leaving a week later to go home, and since they didn't think they were coming back, this was to be the last time I'd see them. As they sat and watched a few movies, I packed my bags only to find that I was missing my UK passport.

I spent the next 8 hours ransacking my apartment looking for it. Just the previous day I had taken it from my office desk to bring home because clearly I'd be needing it to travel. My friends left after a while, and by 5 am I was in a panic... my flight was leaving at 8 am and I had searched everywhere. I could get into London and the US just fine with my US passport, but without my UK passport (and my residence permit) I would not have been able to leave China!

I called one of my co-workers at dawn and had him look in my office. I was sure it had to be there since I knew it wasn't in my apartment. With no luck (and at this point in a paranoid you-clearly-aren't-looking-hard-enough state), I hopped into a taxi to the office to find it myself. Sure enough, my staff were right and my passport was no where to be found. The time was now 7am.

Deciding that it must have fallen out of my pocket or something in the car, I had the driver bring the car and we searched under the seats, down the cushions, to now avail. I was ready to cry.

When I had just about given up, the driver came running into the office with my passport in hand! On a whim he had looked in the trunk, and it was sitting there plain as day. I suddenly realized what had happened... my briefcase had been in the trunk and tipped over, spilling my passport out.

We left for the airport at 7:15am, made the 25 minute drive in 15, and I still managed to board my plane that was leaving at 8:00 am.

Yay, Harvey Luck.