Travel Day (by Karin)

Literally the longest day of my life, it took 32 hours of airports and flights but we have finally arrived in Beijing. I just thought once we conquered the almost 14hr flight to China we would be done, but in fact it made the 10hr wait at the Shanghai airport all the more unbearable because we were so tired already.

We got up at 3 am in Little Rock caught our flight to Chicago and waited a couple hours for our next flight- the big one to China. That flight was actually the nicest we've had so far. The seats were big and we got to spread out. I had 3 seats to myself so I laid down across all of them for part of the journey. Each seat had it's own TV loaded with newly released movies, music and games. One cool part was that we could watch the flight path to check our progress and count down the hours. We were both surprised that we did not fly west to China, we flew North! Over the north Pole, over the Bering Sea and Siberia. Never thought about getting to China that way! Anyway, I highly recommend American Airlines for your overseas journeys.

When we got to Shanghai airport, there was absolutely nothing to do, it was the most boring airport I have ever been in. Very empty and vast, nothing to look at, the airport itself was way away from anything else so we couldn't even look at the city skyline. We waited our 7 hours trying to catch some sleep on the benches. I can't believe there was only one flight to Beijing all day! When the 7 hours was up they announced that our flight was delayed with no time given on when if might arrive. I wanted to cry! It did finally arrive over an hour later, we boarded and waited another hour on the plane before we were allowed to take off. I was so tired I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. Very small cramped seats, not much sleep on that plane.

We finally arrived in Beijing at 2:30 in the morning instead of the original 11:20pm. The flight did not pull up to a gate. It parked in a big airplane parking lot and we unloaded onto the tarmac with buses waiting to take us to the airport. Very strange, there were no other flights arriving at that time of night, I sure would have appreciated the privilege of a gate! Fortunately our guide that was supposed to meet us at the airport was still there, she had been waiting for 3 hours, and took us to our hotel.

We are on the 7^th floor in a very nice room. We could not figure out how to turn the lights on in our room! We felt all over the walls and felt switches that didn't work. Somehow Brent figured out that there was a slot in the wall to put our key in and then the lights came on when he slid our key in and out again. We made it to the middle of the room and the lights went out. Fumbled over suitcases and slid the key again. Again we got a few steps in and the lights went out again. It took us a few times to figure out that we had to keep our key in the slot if we wanted lights and air. Very industrious Hotel!

It is 8am here, I got a few hours of sleep now we are off to see the Great Wall this morning.