Ni hao!

Greetings from Beijing! We arrived safely late this afternoon and, after crawling through rush-hour traffic, checked in to our hotel. We're off to bed early tonight because we're leaving at 8 a.m. sharp tomorrow for the Great Wall!

Here is our travel group (minus two couples) Wednesday morning:


(kneeling in front, l to r: Chad, Frances, Lynette, Chuck. Standing, l to r: Alex, Anne, Mickey, Jacquie, Jennifer, Tamara, Erik, Barbara, Bob, Regina, Jeff, Judy, Lance, Susan)

That photo was taken BEFORE the 13 1/2-hour flight (which, incidentally, was delayed on the ground 90 minutes, although we arrived less than half an hour later than originally scheduled). We touched down in Beijing late afternoon Thursday. Would you like me to tell you how Thursday turns out?

Here's the same group on the bus from the airport:

We still look pretty good, don't you think?

Here's techno-geek Lance on the plane:

In this photo he's watching a movie stored on his iPod on the bigger-screen DVD player. And they're both hooked up to special batteries. And he has his noise-canceling headphones ready.

And here's the photo of our plane, which Lance insisted I include (and since he downloaded the photos for me, I didn't have much choice):



Well, that's enough practice for today. The technology appears to be working, so we're all set for Rachel day -- stay tuned.