We have arrived!

Whew, that was one heck of a long flight. I had to double dose myself on Tylenol Simply Sleep which then caused me to have weird dreams about being at home and crawling into bed and then I would realize that I was sitting up on an airplane. Currently, y'all are just starting your days, we, however, are ending ours. Crazy! So here's the rundown of our day once we left Newark.

We flew straight up over eastern Canada and right over the North Pole. Unfortunately, we both slept through that part. Then we flew down over Russia and Mongolia into China. It seemed like we ate about 10 meals on the flight. I also attempted to watch "Mission Impossible III" twice but was having a little trouble understanding it.

Lookin nice here. Earplugs and an eye mask are the way to go. This was before I had to climb out over the guy sitting on the aisle and our 2 gigantic backpacks about 800 times during the flight.
Here's how I looked about 10 hours into the flight.
This was how I survived. And yes, I walked back and forth between the bathroom wearing my pajamas.

So, anyway, we finally landed and got off the plane. We had to go through immigration where the guards were sort of scary. The one I went to scrutinized my face and my picture on my passport very intently. We picked up our luggage, had nothing to declare and headed out into utter mayhem to find our guide. You would not believe how many people were waiting at the international arrivals gate to pick up or meet other people.

We had to wait for some other members of our group and then we were off. We met Ruby's mom, dad and sisters, Maura's mom, dad and sister and Chloe's mom and dad. Chloe's mom, Holly, is from Tennessee and I can hear my Southern accent get even thicker when I'm around her! So, anyway. We got on the bus and these old ladies came up and tried to help put our luggage on the bus. Sherry, our guide, said NOT to let them do that because you would suddenly notice that your camera was gone. So we were supposed to say, "Bu yao!" to them which means, NO, leave me alone, do not want. We drove through part of Beijing to get to our hotel. The traffic was a little crazy but since we were on a big bus, I wasn't too worried about cars hitting us. It feels so weird to be here and see all the signs in Chinese and have absolutely no idea what they say. There were a lot of workers on the side of the highway, doing what looked like paving and building walls and bridges. Their materials seemed rather primitive but they were certainly working hard. I didn't see anyone standing around doing nothing.
We got to our hotel, which is nice and came up to our room. ReRe, I'm not sure what design our room is.
It looks like 80's design to me with the geometric print carpet.
I was a total weenie and fell asleep as soon as we got to the room. When we were on the plane, I was like, "We have to walk around and get moving when we get there! We have to stay awake!!!" Um, okay. David finally woke me up so I showered and we headed down to dinner in the hotel. MMMMMMM, it was so good. We had chicken with sweetcorn soup which kind of reminded me of egg drop soup with little pieces of corn in it. Then I had beef stirfried with chilies and OH, it was so good! I cleaned my plate.
Then we exchanged some money (Barb, I changed the 50 pound note and got almost 750 RMB for it) and headed out to the Carrefour which is a Chinese Walmart according to Sherry. It was INSANE! There were SO many peope there and I think we might have been the only white people in the store. We looked at all the food, got 4 bottles of water for less than 10 cents each and got some candy--David picked red bean creamy candy. UGH. Are you surprised that he did not like it? We went back to the meat counter and everything was so so so cheap. We saw chicken feet, whole cooked birds, pig heads and lots of other stuff. There were live fish swimming in tanks and crazy looking fruits and vegetables that we didn't recognize. Outside the store were parked probably 300 bicycles. It is so different here but very cool. We're having a good time so far. We're being a little antisocial but we will talk more to people tomorrow since we will be touring all day. We're going to Tianenmen Square, pearl market (!), Forbidden City, lunch, Summer Palace, silk factory and Beijing duck dinner tomorrow night. We are going to be busy! With that, I will close for the day. David's already asleep and I think it's time for me to head that way as well. Talk to you tomorrow!