We are here!!!

August 10th

We are in China!!! It really is surreal. We had a long flight over. Our flight from Chicago to Beijing was 12 ½ hours. At about eight hours in we didn’t think we could endure any more. Amazingly enough we did!!! There were four families from our agency on our flight. We got up and walked a bit on the plane. We visited the other families and chatted a bit to pass the time.

One family has a four year old daughter with them. Katie helped keep Sarah entertained. She was a huge help. Katie really does have an innate ability when it comes to taking care of children. I am not sure she realizes just how good she is. Katie was a trooper on the plane. She did not complain at all.

We were very concerned about Steve’s back after his surgery six weeks ago. Thank goodness it was not too painful on the flight over.

We are now in our hotel, the Beijing International Hotel. It is a five star hotel. It is really nice. Our room is a good size and once we figured out how to turn on the lights we settled in. It is now Thursday, 5:30 PM in Beijing. We have been up for 24 hours with a few short (very short) naps on the plane. It is 5:30 AM according to our body clocks. We need to stay up and adjust to this time zone.

It is very rainy here. We are going to relax a little and then grab some dinner. We haven’t decided if we will venture out of the hotel. It think it depends on the weather. We will also explore the hotel a bit. It has a pool which will be great at this point.

After a short nap we headed out in search of something to eat. It had stopped raining. There were plenty of McDonalds and KFC but we decided against them. We walked down the street and found an incredibly nice mall, International Plaza. This was a very upscale mall. We ate at a Thai restaurant. It was very good. We are now getting ready for bed. Tomorrow we have a full day of touring.