We're in Beijing!!

I'm totally exhausted so I'm going to make this short. We left Thursday evening on a midnight flight to Newark. Arrived 4 hrs. later which was 6:00 eastern time and then had to wait until noon for our flight to Beijing. We got on that flight and then flew about 13 hrs. up over the North Pole (new one for me) and arrived here in Beijing about 2:00 pm. Whew!

We are staying with a friend of Aunt Marydee's. I met her on-line in an LDS adoption group and it turned out that Marydee knew her in NYC. She generously offered for us to stay in her house while we are in town. She lives in a very big nice high rise apartment. We took this photo out of the window. It is straight out of a Dicken's novel - "the best of times and the worst of times" Chinese style.

Our friend has a driver named Shang who is very kind and helpful and speaks almost no English. He picked us up at the airport and then took us to Gayle's favorite restaurant for dinner. We also picked up my Dad from the hotel where he is staying. Yes, my Dad is here in China also. No, he isn't staying with us or even going everywhere with us. He is amazingly independent and just does his thing. He's already scheduled a tour to the Great Wall tomorrow so we may or may not see him. We had a nice dinner though and we should be sightseeing with him on Monday.

First Impressions:

Beijing is all decked out for the Olympics - signs, billboards, etc. everywhere. Also, the traffic here is completely nuts. I can't even watch - people walk and ride bikes right out in the street with reckless abandon. I'm certain their life expectancy must be shorter with all of the close calls I saw tonight - whew~

Well, I am so tired I need to go sleep.... more tomorrow.