Hello from Beijing

We are here!  It was a long, hard flight--especially on Kathryn.  She only slept about 4 hours.  David and I only slept an hour or so.  We have economy plus seats, but even with the extra leg room it's hard to sleep on a plane.  I sure envied those in first class.

Anyway, we made it through customs without a problem, and met our guide out of baggage claim.  She has been wonderful!  She brought us to the hotel, and then after check in we headed to the bank to exchange money and then to dinner at a local noodle place (basically a McDonalds type of restaurant except they serve noodles).

Beijing is such a unique place!  There are cars everywhere--our guide had to take my by the arm as I almost got hit a couple of time.  It definitely takes some skill to walk across the streets.  And driving is a whole other experience.  There are lines marked on the road, but they do not mean anything.  There's all sorts of merging and what not going on constantly (in bumper to bumper traffic)--I could never drive here!!  Anyway, it's all good and has been a lot of fun so far.

We're headed to the Great Wall later today.  Hopefully we will sleep better tonight.  Our systems are still off on our timing--we slept from 6:30-9:30pm last night, then we were up until 3am.  We finally fell back asleep until 5:30-6.

I will try to post some pics tonight.  I've only taken a couple so far, but will take more today.