Off to Nepal!

May 3 at 1:20 AM
My oldest son, Matt, and I take off from San Francisco for a 14-hour flight to Hong Kong on the first leg of our journey to Kathmandu, Nepal. Never in my wildest dreams, back in Mrs. Stauffer's 7th grade social studies class where I learned world geography, could I have imagined that one day I would travel halfway around the world to watch a son of mine get married!
My youngest son, Andrew, is marrying Subechya Shrestha who he met at work in San Francisco. They both have degrees in economics, he from the University of California, Berkeley, and she from Macalester College in Minneapolis. She speaks English excellently, as well as three other languages.

Matt and I have an 11 1/2- hour layover in Hong Kong. Luckily he has a college friend from Stanford who lives there, and she and her husband meet us for dim sum in central Hong Kong. Then it's back to the airport to catch our Dragonair jet for the 5-hour flight to Kathmandu. (I look out the window on board but I don't see any dragons!) After landing and obtaining visas at the Kathmandu airport where Andrew and Subechya meet us, Matt and I arrive at our hotel and collapse into our beds after midnight on May 4. Jet lag has me rising at 5:00 the next morning, though, and I walk the hotel grounds taking pictures, including the one above.