NiHao China

By Chuck

We have arrived.

Our journey started after work on Tuesday.  We first headed to Kissimmee to drop Kali off at the sitter and then met friends for dinner.  After dinner we checked into the hotel at the airport; 5AM comes pretty early and a late night was not in the books.   We arrived at the airport around 6:15 for the first of 3 flights to China.

Orlando -> Atlanta

Atlanta -> Seattle

Seattle -> Beijing

The first 2 flights were uneventful, but the third had a little hiccup.  We were over Alaska when a passenger in first class had some sort of medical situation.  We never found out what the problem was but the pilot made the decision to divert us to Anchorage so the passenger could get proper medical attention.  There were a few doctors onboard so that was reassuring.

I have to say, part of me was concerned about the passenger and that he would be OK, but the other part of me started to get nervous.  We usually fly in a few days early to adjust to the time change and get acclimated, but this time we didn’t.  If we did not arrive on time we would miss the first day touring (Great Wall).  So of course I started working on Plan B.  Fortunately for everyone it worked out OK.  We arrived in Beijing about an hour later than planned.

Immigration was interesting, we had to be fingerprinted when we got off the plane.  We were given a slip of paper after fingerprinting and proceeded to immigration where we were photographed and then fingerprinted again,  I assume they match this one with the one that matched the slip of paper.

Customs just waved us through and we then met our tour manager Jack who introduced us to our driver and gave us instructions for the morning.

Time for bed, many pictures to follow, we were too tired to take pictures last night.

Haoshui