We've arrived!!

We made it!! Yesterday was a long, long day. We got to the Edmonton International Airport at 7am MST (see the pic above of Dean and Amelia all bright eyed and bushy tailed!!) and arrived at the Beijing Oriental Culture Hotel at 5pm Beijing time. That's 3am MST! Ouch! The flight was a bit delayed, but uneventful...we all watched lots of movies and tried to get a bit of sleep. Below is a shot of Amelia while we were waiting for our luggage at the airport. Tired girl!!There was one other couple from our travel group on the same flight as us, and another family arrived at the airport at the same time as us so we all headed to the hotel together - luckily we had a driver and tour guide arranged for us, so we didn't have to worry about anything. Our facilitator, Yulin, met us at the hotel, and got us all checked in. Once we all dropped off our luggage in our rooms, we went for dinner. Thankfully Yulin came along so she did all the ordering for us. The food was absolutely fabulous, and cheap! There were 9 of us eating together and the bill came to $32 for the whole group! Nice! We all fell straight to sleep after getting back to the hotel. Amelia and woke up at 4am, famished! We had a little snack and then we were both wide awake. Below is a picture of Amelia reading a bit to help her fall back to sleep!

Beijing is amazing - loads of people, loads of bikes! And very, very busy! Our hotel is really nice, and obviously caters to the Western traveller. Most of the staff speak a bit of English (a lot better than my Mandarin!) and one of the restaurants has a Western menu. Below are the views from our hotel room as well as a couple of shots of our hotel room. You'll see Dean and Amelia napping while I update this. It's only 9am, but I guess their bodies still aren't quite on Beijing time. I'm feeling fine right now, but expect to crash later on in the day!

Today, Dean, Amelia and I are just going to take it easy. We'll take lots of naps, go swimming at the hotel pool, head down the street to the grocery store and fruit market, etc. We might head to Beihi Park to wander through the gardens. Mostly, we just want to relax and adjust to the time zone. More of our travel group will be arriving today, so we will all have supper together tonight.

Only 3 more sleeps until we meet Iris!!