We made it to Beijing

Well, we left this morning for the airport and Maddie had a pretty hard time- ok so did we. We will be away from her for 16 days but fortunately Grammy and Poppa are taking care of her.

Its 24 hours since we left for the airport at this moment. As I write this it is 9:30pm on December 7th and it is 8:30 am on December 7th in Central Standard time in Texas. It was really almost more travel time than we could handle. We flew American from D/FW to Tokyo and then Japan Airlines (JAL) from Tokyo to Beijing (hey, don't miss the irony that we are Americans and we flew on Japan Airlines on December 7th- Pearl Harbor day, bet that won't happen again) From D/FW to Tokyo was 13 hours and it was pretty ok. The only challenge for me was when the stewardess told business class cabin to "please raise your foot rest" for landing. I was thinking, "yah, and please dispose of your martini glass in the receptacle next to your massage table". Oh well, I guess if they want to pay $8,500 for a 13 hour chair rental they can have their footrest- just don't announce it to the rest of us in "baggage"- oh, I'm sorry "coach".

One nice bonus however is that one of the 8 families we are traveling with was on the same flight as us and sat in front of us. They are adopting their second little girl from China and their cute first Chinese daughter was fun to talk to during the flight. (especially since we miss Maddie)

After we landed in Beijing and went through customs our English-speaking guide for Beijing "Jennifer" met us with a sign after we left customs. She had a van and driver ready for us so things went very smoothly.

I was fascinated by the elaborate Chinese paintings throughout the airport and was interested in all the various uniforms the officials were wearing- I paid attention to that because at some point I do expect to see soldiers in the military uniforms that are so famous and that we all see on television. In the airport and on the way to the hotel I saw most major global companies we are all familiar with. Everything appears to be very commercialized and very industrialized in China now. Unfortunately as a result the smog is so dense you wince your eyes and run inside to avoid it- I wasn't expecting that.

I have a photo of Jamie and I standing in line at customs but you don't get to see it because we look so "nuked". So, here is one of the customs sign. :)