Monday, October 17, 2005
We are in Beijing!!!
After over 24 hours of travel...
WE ARE IN BEIJING!!! Let
me tell ya.. that 13 hours
flight was LONG!!! Doesn't
help that we were in Economy seating on the plane however, the
price of a 1st class ticket was $14,000 which was,
let's just say, a tad over budget!!!
We arrived safely in Beijing
at 2:30pm. The Continental flight was OK. We were initially
thrilled when we boarded the plane that each seat had it's own
TV screen. However, the TV screens in our row of seats were
not functioning properly. They would turn on but you
couldn't
hear the sound and you couldn't
change the channel. Unfortunately the TV was stuck on
the "horror movie" channel. Not very appealing for me. So, I
took to peering through the seats in front of me and was able
to watch the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith twice before our
TVs were fixed 6 hours into
the flight. By the end of the flight we had watched Mr. &
Mrs. Smith a total of 5 times. Hey, if you've
gotta spend the time, why
not spend in with Brad and Angelina!!!
J
We had a small scare when we came
into the Arrivals hall of the Beijing Airport. Our guide was
supposed to meet us in front of the
Starbucks. When we came
out the doors there were 200 people all waiting for someone.
We couldn't
find our guy ANYWHERE and we were accosted by men claiming to
be taxi drivers. After about 15 tense minutes our guide
showed up. He was stuck in traffic. We had a 1 hour ride to
the airport. Our guide has told us that there are 14 million
people just in Beijing. WOW!!! He helped us check into our
hotel and then we spent the evening walking to a nearby
shopping mall and partaking of the local
KFC. We were so happy to
say: "tastes like chicken" especially since the sign next to
the pictures of chicken said "chicken product".
Hmmmmm. In our 2 block
walk we saw a KFC, a Pizza
Hut and a Starbucks. It
was also interesting to see all of the billboards filled with
American models!!! We made is an early night and headed back
to the hotel.
We knew that it would be hard to
leave Jacob and
Katelyn. However, we did
not realize how hard it would be!!! There were some
heart wrenching tears on
both sides. I spent most of the flight reflecting on that.
We have not been separated
from the kids in years!!! We miss them terribly. WE LOVE YOU
JACOB AND KATELYN!!!
We have
no pictures to post today as we spent most of our time
traveling.
Well we are just a couple of days
from meeting Kiah. We are so looking forward to Sunday.
Tomorrow we will be touring various sites around Beijing.
Love
to all from China,
-Nicole and Brandon
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