We Made it Safely!!! (April 1, 2010)

Well one thing is for sure... We are not in Kentucky anymore!!!!  We left Louisville early the morning of Wed. March 31 and somehow after flying for what seemed like forever, we arrived in Beijing on the evening of Thurs. April 1.  So we literally lost a day our of our lives, but I am being promised that I will gain the day back on the trip home.  The flight went as good as could be expected.  We had a 3 hour delay in Chicago for which we were never given a reason why, but according to Kevin when you fly through Chicago, you don't need a reason for a delay because it is just given that there is going to be one.  In Chicago, we met up with 2 other families from our traveling group so at least we had people to visit with during the wait.  We did learn one valuable lesson.  If you are going to be flying for a long time and you are asked if you would like to pay $300 extra to upgrade so you will have 5 extra inches of space--JUMP ON IT-- IT IS WORTH IT.  We declined because I didn't think that 5 inches would make a difference, but boy was I wrong.  The worse seats on an international flight are the middle seats and that is right where we were-- I had 3 people to one side of me and 2 people to the other side.  So it was very cramped!!! and we had a very turbulent landing.  I must say this was the first flight that I had ever been on that after landing the flight attendants walked up and down the aisle with one of those red bio hazard bags for people to dispose of their throw up bags... Luckily Kevin and I were not among the sick.  It seemed like it was mostly the Asians on the flight that were having difficulty with it.  But, the most important thing is that we made it and are safely in China.
 
We are staying at the Kuntai Royal Hotel in downtown Beijing.  As you can imagine, Beijing is a very busy place.  I was surprised to see that most of their signs have both Chinese and English on them.  We are scheduled to do some sightseeing tomorrow.  I think we are going to the Olympic village so I am very excited about that.  I hope this e-mail makes sense since I have not had much good sleep in the last 24 hours, but I mainly just wanted to let everyone know that we arrived safely.  The plan now is to get some sleep-- Kevin is already working on this and doing a pretty good job!!  Maybe tomorrow we will have some pictures of Beijing to post.