Zoebugflyawayhome

NiHo (Hello)from Beijing,
We had an amazing flight on Air Canada from Toronto to Beijing, it really was comparable to the size of Air Force One - it seems to go on for a long time and fits a bunch of people. You are thinking how is this big bus going to get off the ground?! It is amazing the advances that have been made in the last 100 years!! When we started to board the plane, we had to pass through a K-9 line and the dog alerted on Cali - I got nervous, but he alterted on Cali's money belt - all he had to do was show the guy that he had less than $10,000 Canadian $ and everything was good! :0D At first we thought we had really hit the jackpot!

There were 2 entrances to the plane, one for first class and the other for econonmy - obviously we are not first class, anyway, when we stepped onto the plane, there were these little pods with chairs that fold out like lazyboys. Cali & I were just staring at each other and then we saw past this section to the next section, which was your traditional plane seating. For a second we thought we were going to be living large! :0D Actually it was still very nice, before we boarded our flight, we asked the gate attendants if we could be moved so that we could all sit together on the same row. She gave us seats on the same row, but sat us with an empty seat between each seat, so we had lots of room! I think she was impressed with Cali's attempts to speak to her in Chinese! :0D

It was about a 13 hour trip gate to gate - We all watched a bunch of movies, slept a little, and ate till we were little ticks. They fed us 3 meals and still we turned down a cup of noodles, we were full to the brim!! We walked straight through all the scanning equipment and customs and checkpoints without any problems at all! Yeah prayer team!!! Once we came through the doors in Beijing, our guide Rosa was waiting for us and took us immediately to the van and straight to the hotel - it only took about 40 minutes to arrive. Rosa took care of everything for us at the hotel! All of you who know our ladybug stories will love this - someone had put a ladybug sticker inside the van right by where we were sitting - I got a pic of it!

Once we made it to the hotel, Calixto passed out for the night, I passed out for about and hour and then woke up so we could get things ready to begin our first day of sight seeing! Unbelievable, that 24 hours ago we were half way around the world from here! Can't wait to post about our adventures tomorrow!!

Teresa, Cali & Calixto