Flight to Beijing

Left Vancouver for Beijing Saturday afternoon.  While waiting for loading, we met about 5 moms with China daughters, going to the same place we were!  We compared notes on ages, provinces, etc.  Realized that we are going to have a great time with these great people.  They are not in the same travel group as us, but we will see each other in the hotels and at some of the events.

The girls and I had 3 seats together, in the center of the plane.  The girls were happy to see tvs in the seat backs!   They watched the Justin Beiber movie, Never Say Never, and slept part of the way.  I ended up watching 3 episodes of Hawaii 5-0 and then started watching the Kennedys mini-series (with Katie Holmes as Jackie).  The Kennedys was very addictive.  I could not stop watching!  The plane started landing just about the time that Lee Harvey Oswald was setting up in the  School Book Depository.  Thankfully, I missed the assassination; living through it once was enough!  We landed in Beijing just around 4 pm Sunday afternoon, July 24, collected our luggage, went through customs and found our guide waiting for us at the end!

Nancy and William were our guides for Beijing, Nancy was the guide for the Dumpling group for the entire trip!  She works for BLAS and arranged all of our tours, etc.; William was a tour guide hired by BLAS to deal with the sites in Beijing.   We were herded onto a bus, given bottles of water, and told to relax for the drive to the hotel (approx 40 minutes).  Once on the bus, it started raining.  It rained all the way to the hotel and continued through the night and part of the next day.  We were told that it is monsoon season in China and that we would probably get rain all week.  It was very hot and humid when we arrived, much like home!