Saturday May 8th Day 1 China

Well, except for the flight being extremely long, we had a very smooth flight from Vancouver to Beijing on Friday-Saturday May 7th-8th. Mary did really well on the flight. We had a great breakfast at White Spot with the boy's early Friday before school started to see them off. We landed in Beijing on Saturday around 2:30 pm (China time) and met out Beijing guide Fay at the airport. We had a driver to the hotel, Mary couldn't understand how we all could sit in the back seat without seatbelts. We arrived at the airport around 4:30pm, and met Yulin, she works for our agency FOI and facilitates all trips (apx every 6 weeks). She gave us an hour to get freshened up and we met in the hotel lobby at 5:30 to meet a few other families who were already there.
We all went for chinese food a few minutes away by foot, and once there we remembered what we had been missing for the past five years. The food is just amazing, words can't describe how different and good it is compared to Canadian Chinese food.
We were beyond exhausted after dinner, and decided to head up to the room to get ready for an early sleep. We had alot of trouble staying asleep for the night, jet lag had set in.
All in all a great travel experience and first few hours in China, not to mention the room we were given was amazing. We are posting a link here for Shaw Photo Share as we are unable to post pictures any other way. We will upload pictures whenever we have a chance, so feel free to keep looking to see if we have added any.
Here is the link, hopefully this works, if not we will try another way.
You will notice in a few of the first pictures some girls who are around Mary's age. These are sisters who have come on the trip as well to become big sisters. The two Chinese girls are both from Mary's province in Hunan and have similar facial features, this has been just great for Mary to meet many new girls.
Cindy

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/view/22960859121-1273517997-65056/0