Welcome to Beijing!!!

OK, this post is going to be quick and might be a bit rambling since we are super tired.  The trip started out pretty good.  BNA to Chicago was on time and we arrived early.  As we were chatting on the plane, a pilot boarded and sat in one of the empty seats in front of us.  Turns out, he goes to church with us and is a friend of Steve's, Will Beasley!  Will was kind enough to escort us all the way to our terminal to board the flight to Beijing.  However, even though it was only 10am, we found out our 1pm flight was already delayed to 3:30pm. 

Luckily, our good friend and pilot, Jason Canada, was also in Chicago and came by and took us to lunch.  It was a great way to pass the time and since his flight was going out well before ours, he took Jenna on a little field trip.

We got back to our terminal in time to realize that Deanne's seat was not with ours any longer.  When we tried to change it, we were met with attitudinal (is that a word?  It is now.) gate agents.  Apparently, not only did a system change make boarding mass chaos, but the delay ended with a change in equipment and a whole flight full of seat changes.  There were a lot of unhappy people it sounds like. 

Despite Deanne sitting far away from us, the flight was an uneventful as one could get and Jenna did excellently!  I think I slept maybe 4 hours (not consecutive) and Jenna probably slept 5.  We got through customs and our bagging quickly and then found our guide, Gloria waiting for us!

We took about a 30-40 minute drive through Beijing to get to our hotel.  There was some confusion at the hotel and it appeared that I didn't actually pay for the hotel so I had to exchange cash to cover it.  I'm glad I brought enough.  Anyway, we finally got upstairs and then couldn't figure out how to use the internet.

But here we are.  We are about to go to bed.  It's already 9:30pm here and our day starts at 9:00am tomorrow.  I know it's late, but I'm gonna get a shower, take some benedryl to open my ears and see how it goes.

Tomorrow is a multitude of sightseeing stuff, but I'm too tired to remember.

Thanks for all the prayers.  They are so needed.  I'm tired and cranky.  :)  BTW, if you have my cell number, don't bother texting.  I forgot to turn off my twitter feeds and weather warnings etc, so I cut my texting off so I don't have to pay for all that.

I do have access to my home email address, so comment here, Facebook or email me!

More later!