Sunday, March 13th

Adam and Hannah got up around 6:30 am, and they let me sleep until 9:30am. I woke up rested, but full of panic. Leslie and Matt skyped me as soon as I turned on the computer, and asked me when we were leaving. I turned on the TV and saw things were getting worse. I went into panic mode, and told Adam we had to leave immediately. He called his boss at Nissan in TN and his boss agreed we should do what we needed to do. Adam called to book flights. He told the travel agent we would go anywhere except China. She looked at South America, Canada, Australia, etc...and said we could not leave until Monday night at midnight. Even though I would have liked more time to get our bags together, I knew we could not wait that long. He put a hold on that flight, and told her to keep searching and call us back...she never did. Adam called Lance and they were wanting to leave too. Adam then called a different travel agency, and was able to find 6 tickets flying to LA, but we only had 45 minutes to pack our bags. We did it. It was interesting running thru the house making quick decisions on what we would be taking in our 2 carry ons. We each ended up with 2 pair of pants, 2 pair of shoes, 3 pair of underwear and socks. I picked out my favorite jewelry, and grabbed Adam and I's "love journal" that we write to each other back and forth on. Hannah got her blankie, her baby Carol, and her leapster. She has not complained one time about leaving everything else behind. The Sullivan's have a car, so they picked us up to drive to airport. I walked outside with our ex-patriot plant that has been passed down who knows how many times, and UT (our fish), with his food. The first ex-pat neighbor I saw, I handed him the plant and fish with feeding instructions, and said please take care of them until you have to leave, and then put them on your doorstep and hope for the best. We got to the airport and were given meal tickets, but only had time to get a quick bite at McDonalds, so we gave tickets to people who had been sleeping in the airport trying to get out. They were thrilled! As we were lining up to board the plane, another quake happened, and our flight was delayed a little. We spoke to a Canadian man who had been at the airport when the earthquake happened and told us about standing on the runway for 3 hours, and then being jammed into a small room with about 2,000 people in it. At one point there was 20,000 stranded at the Narita airport. He was relieved to be getting on the flight with us. We are so thankful that NISSAN took care of us and got us out of there fast. We received phone calls from management when we got to L.A. welcoming us to America!