Day 1 (and 2, and 3)...

Origionally our flight left from Anchorage Alaska on 4/1 at 0230. Unfortunately the volcano was not co-operating and our flight ended up getting canceled. This would have been just a minor setback except that we were meeting tyler in the seatle airport. After three hours on the phone with Alaska Air, Asiana Air, and Orbitz.com we secured a ticket that would land us in Hong Kong on 4/3; only 24 hours later than we origionally planned. Unfortuantly, the flight left from Fairbanks and not Anchorage. So we headed north with Macrina (much love sis) and Nathaniel Ray. We drove through a blizzard (by hich I mean John drove and I slept and read books) and arrived at Tae Freeman's house in the evening. We slept on her floor and caught a plane the next morning at 0700. It was decided, as Tyler's phone battery was dying, that he would take the origionally booked flight and arrive a day before us, and that we would meet at the airport in Hong Kong.
Long story very short, we flew from Fairbanks to Seatle, Seatle to Seoul, and Seoul to Hong Kong. It took more than 48 hours from the time we left home to get to Hong Kong, and we slept in 3-4 hour chunks.
Upon arrival we learned that our bags had not made the airplane switch-over from Seoul to Hong Kong and that we would have to return the next day at 1400 to get them.
Minutes later we hooked up with Tyler who, frantically running about, informed us that the last of the public transit was about to close and we needed to get on the tram pronto. This was really unfortunate because weldon needed to charge his Iphone to get the address to our hostel and we didn't have the time. We tried to call his mom and have her look it up for us but the phone wasn't taking our coins. So we got on the tram with no destination in mind.
After a bit of bickering and travel induced frustration it was decided that Ty and Wldon would go to Ty's hostel and find an Internet Cafe so that we could look up the location of our hostel. It worked, and after a short cab ride of $100HK (about $12US) we ended up outside our hostel - Ty chose to stay at his own place because he had already paid for the night, and decided to meet us at our hostel the following evening. Bad news though; we showed up at our hostel around 0200 and they had sold our rooms already because they didn;t think we were comming.
And so we had a problem. Alone in Hong Kong, no place to stay, no public transit running, no map, no packs, no way to communicate with ty, no nothing.
So what did we do? Like any good americans, we went to McDonalds. The plan was to stay up all night and wait for the morning to find a hostel, get our packs, and hook back up with Ty.
And that leads us to now. We stayed in McDonalds till 0415 and than began to wander. We walked all over the quiet streets, through small gardens, closed markets, dingy alleyways, between skyscrapers, and along the water. At first the task seemed ominous, staying up all night with nothing to do and nowhere to go in a city that is most the way across the world from my life, but within minutes we were laughing and talking and having a merry good time. At 06156 we caught the first puiblic transit back to the main backpackers area and john and weldon are finding a place to stay while I start our blog. We are tired and stinky and dirty and generally a pretty ragged bunch, but our spirits are high and the sun is rising. Now it's off to get our bags and find Ty.