After we got married (🥳🎉🎉) …
…and immediately got food poisoning and also poisoned our guests (I am so sorry)
…we hung out in the US for about another month.
I mostly spent it working overtime trying to get extra stuff done before our trip so that I would be able to enjoy the trip more. Here are a bunch of pictures and captions on moments that made me happy.
We spent a lot of time with Tannie Two
She started sleeping in our room with us, keeping me company while I was working, and being a very good noodle. She loves car rides and would come with me to pick up Hugo, who was working at our parents’ restaurant.
Hugo’s mom and sister got to spent time with my family. We had dumplings and they also helped! Then my family proceeded to gossip among themselves for like another hour after dinner.
We also did face masks 😀
We got drinking water from a local spring.
Had game nights with Richie and Josie 🙂
Spent time with Sophie & Andrew (not pictured, haha). We explored the forests by my house, ate Ethiopian food, and had a bonfire and pizza at their house.
We worked at the Mt. Asian (my parent’s Chinese take out restaurant).. and by “we” I mean mostly Hugo. He did most of the work and got paid for it too, hahaha. I would just help during busy hours. When it wasn’t busy I just hung out and worked on my remote job.
We had a date to an (expensive) sushi restaurant and then Hugo held my hand while I leaned back precariously for this picture. We also saw ducks and Hugo looked v handsome.
Also not pictured, all the shit I bought online in order to pack stuff for our eventual move to Ecuador. Before we knew it, it was time to go!
We had literally two days of travel with 19 hours of layover in Cairo in between.
After crying at the IAD airport because the TSA agents put my film into their new fancy (not x-ray) machine and then tried to gaslight me into believing the machine wasn’t going to damage my film, we got on the plane and headed to Cairo.
At the airport, we were both grumpy since we didn’t get enough sleep. Somehow we stumbled across the fact that Egypt Air provides a free hotel and meals for people with long layovers. We had to give our passports to the airline. The person in charge called my name, I handed him my US passport, he gave me a second-look (pretty passport picture with make up compared to haggard, tired, me was probably the issue). He then called Hugo and after confirming it was in fact him, he went, “Do you speak English?” and then nominated Hugo to be the leader of our like 14 person group of all Chinese people and then him. I found it very funny that he bypassed the American passport because of my Chinese face and asked the Ecuadorian if he spoke English.
It took like five hours but we finally made it to the hotel, had breakfast, and then I took a nap. Originally, our friend Daniil was going to take us to Sakkara pyramids. But my phone showed me the wrong time, we left the hotel too late, and weren’t going to be able to make it before they closed to visitors. So instead we went to a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Giza pyramids, which was also nice.
We also walked along the Nile and did a little bit of souvenir shopping. Then it was back on the plane and something like 45 hours after we left in the US, we got to our apartment in Beijing. Just to be super jet-lagged for the next like three days but it’s fine. Who needs sleep.
Until the next one!
Hugothy