We made it!

Friday, October 9, 2009

Well, we finally made it to China. After a very long day of flying, we are now comfortably in our hotel room. We left home this morning at 4:45am and flew out of Norfolk at 6:53am. With a short layover in Chicago, it was on to Toronto, Canada. We had a much longer layover in Toronto and then the flight was delayed because of a medical issue with one of the passengers from the flight before ours. We finally boarded and took off for Beijing. After 12.5 hours of flying, we finally landed in Beijing at 4:45pm (Beijing time). Which means from start to finish, it took a full 24 hours to get here!

We were met at the airport by Cindy (that's her "American" name) who will be our guide while we are in Beijing. We were driven to our hotel and checked in. There are a total of five families in our travel group. We actually flew from Toronto to Beijing sitting in the seats right behind Linda and her sister who are here adopting Linda's second daughter from China. Karen and her mother arrived yesterday, but we haven't seen them yet. Karen is also here for her second adoption. Lori & Eric arrived on an earlier flight today and were already checked in when we arrived. Hank & Gail won't arrive until Sunday.



After about 10 minutes or so of getting our stuff in our rooms, we all met back downstairs in the lobby and walked around to a local grocery store to stock up on water and snacks for our rooms. This was the most interesting, by far, of any grocery store I've ever been had the pleasure of touring. Apparently, in China, they prefer their food to be fresh. I'm not talking about freshly frozen, or fresh packed...I mean "still alive" fresh! Most all of the seafood was still swimming and if it wasn't it was laid over a bed of ice, completely in tact. Chickens still had their heads and even a feather or two. Crabs were crawling around everywhere, frogs hopping around this plastic bin they were kept in, and some things I couldn't even identify. The cut meats were not wrapped like we do, they were also laid over a bed of ice. Being vegetarian, I opted out on anything in that section. We did get some water and chips for the room. Randy decided that he needed a peanut butter sandwich since the airplane food left much to be desired.

He actually told me when we landed that after we get back home, he was never going to set foot on an airplane again! Although, I think that promise is much similar to the ones we make to ourselves when we wake up with a killer hangover and say, "I'm never drinking again!!" At the time, there was no doubt in my mind that he meant it. But we survived and we are looking forward to an all day tour of Beijing and the Great Wall tomorrow.