O'Hare Hotel

O'Hare airport was our choice of accommodations for the night. After people watching for several hours, we decided to peruse the concourse and scout out a spot to hunker down for the night. We found a somewhat secluded area at the very end of the concourse and agreed that's where we'd sleep. We left concourse C and headed over to B which was the only other area we could get to without going through security again and we had also been told our bar and food options were better in B, and it was time for a beer. After a monetary raping, for 2 Stella's, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to our “bedroom”. We sat around reading and watching CNN news until the airport slowly emptied out of all but us and the night cleaning crew.

P – The airport is quite peaceful at night.

G – Most places are nice when they aren't crowded and noisy.

P – I don't think I'm going to have any trouble sleeping here.

G – In 18 years I have yet to find ANY place you have trouble sleeping. I on the other hand may have a problem if I have to listen to the same news stories on CNN all night.

P – Really...I do not think the fact that Bristol Palin can't dance, but is still on DWTS, is newsworthy and needs to be repeated over and over and over...

G- I think we'll be fine sleeping here, but I'm worried about our stuff. What if someone walks off with it while we're asleep?

P- We'll hear someone approaching or touching our stuff. I can't imagine that we'll sleep soundly.

Within an hour of making this statement Phyllis was snoring. I had just started dozing around midnight when the vacuuming lady made her way over to our area and startled me. She vacuumed all around us, even under Phyllis' “bed”. I offered to move our luggage cart, but she said, “No, no! You sleep. It ok.” Thank you, kind lady. Well, it is clear that we would not hear someone if they wheeled away all of our stuff. I rummaged through the bags to see how I could safeguard them. I found the strap of a bag that I wound between the straps of the backpacks and connected to a carabiner to my belt loop. I put the strap of Phyllis' purse, which she was sleeping on, over my fanny pack, then put my head on and wrist through the fanny pack strap. It was basically a cluster F, but if anyone touched any one bag, they'd all move and hopefully, so would one of us.

We got about 4-5 hours of sound sleep until we were rudely awakened by people arriving to catch their morning flights. Inconsiderates!!!

P- Why do you have everything strapped together like this? When did you do that?

G- Around midnight, right after you slept through the lady vacuuming under your chair!

P- I did? Thank you for taking care of us baby.

G- Thank me from afar. Your breath smells like ass! Let's go brush our teeth and move over to the other section that is less crowded.

P – Good idea, cuz your breath doesn't exactly smell like roses and your hair looks like Buckwheat.

We drank coffee then washed our faces, put on fresh makeup and fixed our hair (thank God we got it cut off) and were ready to face a new day! We went to gate C16 and checked in again with the gate agents. It was easy to remember the lady's name I had spoken to yesterday, Gina, and chatted her up a bit about the freight weight. Phyl ran off and got us McDonald's so we wouldn't be starving before dinner. Shortly thereafter, Gina began calling names..... Yuan, Phan, McCall, Champion, Wursteisen...... yay!!!!! We got on the flight. We texted Jeremy, Connor and our parents. We were off to Asia!!!

P- Can you believe it? We're on a plane to Hong Kong!! I'm very excited!

G- Me too, muffin! We've been planning this for so long. I can't believe it's actually here.