On the plane. For a really long time!

View from our hotel window

We're in Beijing!

Walking around downtown Beijing

We're waiting for room service to show up here at the New World Courtyard hotel in Beijing, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to say WE'RE HERE! Everything so far is going as smoothly as we could have hoped for. We didn't even get charged for overweight baggage.

We've actually been here since about 11 a.m. Beijing time, (about 9 p.m. on the 14th, Denver time), after having been traveling for over 24 hours straight - and that's not even counting getting to the airport early, having gone to work earlier on the 13th, etc. So, by the time we finally checked in to our hotel, I had been awake for close to about 40 hours straight, and was not really firing on all thrusters, shall we say. :) I had this idea that I'd try to keep everyone awake until at least 7-8 pm tonight before giving in to sleep, but we all involuntarily conked out around 5, and Di woke me up just a little while ago (it's about 11:40 pm here right now). So much for that idea. (Di said she had actually tried waking me before, but that I wouldn't wake - she said it must have been an indicator of my grave need for sleep; I think she just needs to talk to my mom about my high school days).

The girls have been INCREDIBLY good. Genevieve cried once, for about 10 minutes total during the entire journey. Sarah was just Sarah - a happy kid who goes with the flow. We took a United Airlines flight from Denver to San Francisco (it was okay, not spectacular), and a Cathay Pacific flight from SFO to Hong Kong and on to Beijing. The Cathay flight was wonderful in terms of service, but short in terms of leg room. It was a long flight to have my knees against the back of the seat in front of me; I can only imagine Dave's situation (since he's 4 inches taller than I am at 6'2"). I'm guessing it was setup with its Hong Kong clientele in mind, I imagine I'm rather taller than their typical traveler.

Once we arrived in Beijing and through customs, Heritage's Beijing representative, Kathy, was right there to pick us up, usher us to a van, and get us settled (it was SO good to see her face when we emerged from the terminal)! The drive from the airport to the hotel was interesting in and of itself, with a strange juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern. We passed skyscrapers under construction swathed in green, right next to watch towers from the Ming dynasty (which Kathy casually pointed out as we passed on the freeway). After checking in at our hotel, we took a walking tour of the area around our hotel with Kathy. She took us to a noodle shop for lunch (unfortunately Gennie had a temporary breakdown during which she fretted about dropping her chopsticks, and that she couldn't eat soup very well with chopsticks, and that she needed more chopsticks, and she wasn't really hungry for food, but she wanted her CHOPSTICKS - Kathy was very gracious in acknowledging that Gennie was one tired little girl at that point), and we visited the local market to buy some supplies. I'm hoping to get back to the market to take some pictures, it was an amazing place with lots of fresh produce and meat being prepared on the spot. It also felt very festive with the red lanterns hanging everywhere inside.

Everywhere we go I notice that we are the subject of much curious attention from the residents of Beijing. Sarah in particular garners attention for her thick, curly, light-colored hair. Several Chinese grandma types have stopped to touch Sarah's hair and to pinch Gennie's cheeks. I'm trying to get used to being eyed up and down (if we're a novelty here, I can only imagine what reactions we may get in places like Hefei), but I have to admit that it makes me a bit self-conscious!

Tomorrow, we go on tours of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace. For now, I'm going to go eat some food (a funny note - the hotel had their Western menu, but not their Chinese menu, available at this late hour - of course, their "Western" menu included congee...), and then I'm going to hop into bed. Being horizontal sounds SO good right now!

It's amazing that we'll meet our daughter in a few short days; it still hasn't really registered that we're really HERE! (Di and I were discussing that it feels so much like walking around San Francisco's Chinatown, or any place in the U.S. where there's a heavy Chinese influence - it just felt too "easy" somehow to get here, even with the long flight).

Anyway - we're healthy, we're happy, we're HERE, and we're just in awe.