China at last!

This was sent on March 3rd, 8:00 am China time.
We made it! Thanks for writing. I saw that we had a few texts once we landed last night. But it said roaming charges would apply, and we thought that maybe roaming to China could add up pretty fast. :) We were a bit surprised that we even had service for our US phones. They have not given us our Panda phone as yet, but we got in pretty late, and we were pretty wiped out. I hardly slept at all on the plane, although I tried. Not too comfortable. I slept well once we hit the hotel though, which I thought would probably help with jet lag.

The trip was very good and uneventful. We were able to watch lots of movies - they seemed to feed us pretty often, which I'm sure was to get our bodies ready for the new time zone we would be in. I did have a short amount of time toward the end of the flight, after I had dozed awhile that I felt pretty sick, but David found the sick bag, which I breathed into awhile and started feeling better pretty quickly. Of
course I was praying, and David probably was too. :) No fun, hope that doesn't happen again. Not sure what was going on - but it seemed worse when I closed my eyes, so I kept them open after that. Wasn't sure if it was a motion sickness thing, or stomach something - so debated between Pepto or Dramamene. Didn't do either. Since I had a window seat and was awake most of the time I kept checking for the northern lights. I did see something kind of light and hazy, but didn't see color - so am not sure if that's what it was. I also saw a really bright light that I couldn't figure out, but that seemed not to move and seemed pretty high up. When I asked David about it later, he said it was the light on the planes wing. So funny!

We got through customs without issues although the lines were really long - and there were a lot of them. One of their guards directed a bunch of us in a long line for foreigners, over to a line for Chinese
nationals. We felt a bit out of place there, but saw a blonde that got through our line ahead of us and didn't have problems either. :) Our 'Great Wall' agency person was standing with a flag and there were 2 other families on our plane that he was waiting for too. One couple and their parents spoke Spanish, so our guide had someone talk to them on the phone. The other couple reminded me a bit of Andy & Michelle Bullar - about their age. They've been waiting on their referral for 6 years too. They're getting a little girl.  We're all at the same hotel. But we didn't see them at breakfast. There were two restaurants to choose from (American and Chinese). We, of course, went to the American style. Pretty empty, but lots of food at the buffet. Some of it American, lots of it not. I tried some rice congee, since I had heard it's a common 'comfort food' here. It was pretty much watery warm rice - not too much taste. The rest of the things I tried were very good too. Loved the fish. It was a little strange eating fried rice for breakast, but very good.
David's currently flipping through cable channels and found a 'Chinese Idol' show. I don't think he's found anything in English as yet. We're very thankful that we have access to gmail in Beijing, but we
couldn't access the blog for some reason. In any case, we would appreciate your updating the blog if
you would. I am a little brain dead as yet, and we will be heading off to exchange our American money for the Chinese variety and go tour from 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. (It's currently a little after 8:00 a.m. Saturday which is around 6:00 p.m. your time Friday).