Day 1

Hello everyone! We successfully completed the first leg of the trip! After locking ourselves into an aluminum tube for 14 hours, we are in Beijing and let me tell you, the "fog" is thick around here. I am pretty sure we call it smog back home, but hey if they want to call it fog, so be it, when in Rome...

Our route of flight took us up over the North Pole. We left Chicago and flew straight north, flying past Green Bay, across the Upper Peninsula, and then across the Hudson Bay in Canada. After crossing the pole, we traveled south through Siberia, across the eastern part of Mongolia and then into Beijing. In all, the flight was 6700 miles and mostly uneventful...other than the fact that as soon as the fasten seatbelt sign came on, inevitably the same old Chinese man would stand up and wander around the plane. The flight attendants would chase him down and get him to sit back down eventually. It was definitely amusing to watch two American women who do not speak Mandarin trying to convince an old Chinese man that speaks no English that he needs to stop wandering around when the fasten seatbelt sign is on...ahhh international travel, gotta love it.

So that is about it for the first day, not much other than an airplane ride and trying to convince my body that it isn't 1 o'clock in the afternoon and I shouldn't be wide awake at 3 AM. We took some pictures and promise there will be more tomorrow!

BJ and April