China Day 1 - May 30th

Well today was.....LONG!!

We got up and finished up some things around the house, packed some last minute things etc...  Mike went to meet his Mom, Dad and Lisa for breakfast while I finished packing, tidying up and got a shower.  I noticed everything I did I would think to myself "this is the last night we will sleep in our bed without Mhyia here", "this is the last time I will shower in my house without Mhyia here", it is very surreal.

We had MANY phone calls of well wishes which was very nice, everyone kept saying to me "you must be soooo excited" and yes I am very excited but it is so hard to be so excited with so many unknowns ahead of you!  Of course we are so excited to get Mhyia but I must admit I was not looking forward to the 13hr flight, not looking forward to not knowing where we were in China and not being able to communicate with everyone, read signs etc...

Getting ready to leave!

 My Mom and Dad picked us up around 11am and we headed to the airport, at this time our 2:55pm flight was saying delayed by 20min, while we drove by my work I called Kimberly to say bye and she told me our flight was now saying delayed by 1hr 45min ugh.  We decided to stop by the airport and grab some lunch - I was savoring every second of that Wendy's hamburger!! 

My parents dropped us off at the airport and we headed in - it took us less than 5 min to check our bags and get through security etc... When we got to our gate we noticed that our flight was now saying delayed until 5:20....seriously?  We walked around a little and sat around for a while only to discover our flight was delayed AGAIN until 7pm and then later until 7:20pm.  We had a bite to eat and FINALLY got to board our plane.  We didn't actually back out until 8:13pm so 5hrs and 20min late.

The flight was okay, just very very very long!  We had dinner,drinks, soup and sandwich, and a breakfast.  We didn't want to sleep too much but you really have nothing better to do - I must admit by the end I was literally going crazy.  I an NOT looking forward to the flight home, other than I will be home!  I ended up talking to some of the flight attendants during our flight and discovered the one lady lived in Dundas where Mike grew up and lived on the same street as Mike did as a child - small world!!

We landed in Beijing around 9:00pm and by the time we got off, went through immigration, got our luggage and then found our guide it was just after 10pm.  Our guide Ray and our driver Duke (gotta love the names lol) took us to the hotel - because we were so late the traffic was totally normal and it only took about 30min!

We finally made it up to our room which is okay?  Nothing fancy, if I was home and staying here, well I would not stay here lol.  The lobby is beautiful, the beds are hard as everyone has said but we like them a lot!!  We boiled some water so we could use it in the morning to brush our teeth and went to bed.

All in all I am not loving the feeling of being somewhere so different from home and somewhere where I can't read the signs and can't understand anyone - it  is a weird feeling, kind of unsettling but I am sure today will be better now that we have gotten some sleep.

It is now 4:37am and I am up typing this post - sorry it is so long but I just really want to try to capture everything that happens because I know I will not remember all the details later!

That is it for now - I will post about Day 2 later tonight!