We Made It

We made it to Beijing while you were all sleeping! Basically we chased the sun west. We never once saw darkness. From Detroit we actually went up through Canada, flew over Alaska, as well as part of Russia and down into Beijing, China. Not a lot of scenery, but it was neat to see things I usually only get to talk about or see on a map, including glaciers!

Just some odds and ends about our flight:

* We flew over 6,500 miles!

* It was a looooooooooonnnnnnng 13 hour flight!!!!

* The temperature we were flying in above the clouds was -85 degrees F (WOW! Talk about cold!)

* We flew at over 80,000 feet altitude

We did try to sleep on and off. I can't say we ever got a really good sleep, but we did get a little on and off.

We met 3 more families tonight that will be with us on our tours and most likely "gotcha day". There are 7 families total for our group.

It took another 2 1/2 hours to get to our hotel once we left the airport because the traffic is so bad, but only certain times of the day. I guess they are only allowed to drive certain times of the day and by their license place they can only drive on certain days. We wonder how they get to work on those other days??? There are over 20 million people in Beijing alone, and over 10 million vehicles! Our guide, David, told us that there are 3 million dogs and cats in the city as well. We did see some just wondering around. :(

I don't even have the words yet to describe what I'm seeing. There are new buildings mixed with the old and then nice mixed with the not-so-nice...TOMORROW I will have pictures for you because we will be touring ALL DAY LONG! Our tour starts at 8am and we'll be gone until bed time probably! We will be going to the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Hutong Tour, and an acrobatic show.

Tonight Ty is not feeling good. Please pray he will feel better tomorrow. He has a respiratory thing going on and I think what he had flared back up because we've been traveling for 24 hours.

So, since he was resting I went out to dinner with one family and our guide to a small Chinese restaurant, and boy was the food good! WOW! It was FABULOUS!  NOTHING like the real thing! I will miss it when we leave. I also ate my whole meal with chopsticks! I had no other choice so I had to, and I did it! :)   They also serve the food family style so each person takes a little of everything on the table.

Sorry I do not have pictures yet, but tomorrow I will!

Cam, Keri, Coleton, Keke, Kaden: Miss you kiddos! Hopefully we can figure out a time to skype over the weekend! Love you guys! Hi Diann! Hope all is going well there!

Good night! I'm looking forward to being in a bed! Airplane seats just don't do it!

~Marci