Done Deal!

I got an email from my friend in Shanghai:

I am available to help any time :)  Actually I was checking their official website the other day to see if any new info posted. The countdown clock was back on again and showing 400 some days to go !!! Today I checked the website again, the 400 some days changed back to 132 days, which put it in October this year. The link you gave me is an annoucement from 2011 marathon, annoncing best performing family runners. Which provided a contact number different from other numbers I called before. So I called the number and finally find someone. This lady told me this year's game is planned for October, the date is not finalized yet (there is a nation wide CCP party meeting in Beijing in October, so the organization committee of the game is waiting for a date from the city). She told me the marathon is definately on in October and once the date is set, they will post the registration info on their website. Great news!  I guess we just need to check the site from time to time . I will let you know if I see the registration notice. Take care, girl!

So yeah, back to uncertainty about the 2012 Beijing Marathon date.  But the Chinese website still has a countdown posted, and it's counting down to Oct. 14.

So I did what any irrational budget-conscious traveler would do. 

I bought plane tickets.

I had a tough conversation with hubby about priorities.  And the marathon is not the priority.  It would be awesome, but the priority for us is getting to see a new country and explore. 

I'd been playing around with plane tickets, putting some on 24 hour holds, letting them lapse, putting new tickets on hold, letting them lapse.

Well, yesterday I had a deadline to purchase tickets on hold.  As usual, I looked around to see if there was something better to put on hold.

And there wasn't.  In fact, to book the exact trip I had on hold, it would have been about $600 more.

So I pulled the trigger. 

The trip over sounds good.  Long but good.  We're on American, so that means we'll get miles, we'll be on a single airline, and we'll be on a US-based carrier (not a good thing in any way other than making communication easier). 

We'll be gone just under 3 weeks.  All we have are the tickets from Dallas to Beijing, and then Shanghai to Dallas, so we still have to figure out everything in between, but at least we've got the big ones out of the way.