In Beijing

I arrived in Beijing about 9:00 pm last night. All my flights were fine. I watched 5 movies on the 10 hour flight to get to Tokyo -- that really helped the time pass. I met up with another woman travelling with GW in Tokyo and we sat together on that flight. She is really nice, lives in Toledo and was also travelling completely alone.

I was a very interesting experience walking off the plane in Tokyo to all the chinese. My first thought was I hope the bathrooms have western toilets. So far so good on that one!

I basically got no sleep from when I woke up Sat. morning until last night -- probably about 27 hours awake. I woke up around 6 this morning so about 5 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm sure I will be tired tonight.

Today we go to the great wall, forbidden city and tian an mein square (spelling!). It will be a full day with a bunch of really tired people! I should meet up with my friend Amy tonight and tomorrow we will head for Guangzhou.

I miss my family a ton! It was so hard to say goodbye to them at the airport, but we all handled it very gracefully!

My guide is very nice and so far very helpful. My room is just as expected -- very nice, but with very hard beds. Hooking up my computer was a snap last night and it will be hopefully as easy in Guangzhou. I spoke to and saw the kids and Kurt last night and am very happy with the modern technology that we have!

The first questions from the kids were if it was dark here and if I was holding the baby yet! They told me they had already slept and that I should go to bed.

Thanks for all the emails I had when I arrived -- it was nice to have them to read!!!