We have arrived in China

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Hi Everyone!

After a long (14.5 hours) but uneventful flight, we landed at Beijing's massive airport, tracked down our luggage and checked into our hotel at approximately 2:00 AM Beijing time on Saturday morning (Friday afternoon in the US).

That Saturday, we enjoyed a "Welcome to China" lunch hosted by friends we hosted at our house approximately two years ago. The Peking Duck (along with a variety of other dishes) was excellent. It was fun meeting their families and getting reacquainted.

Immediately after lunch, Grace and Stephanie went to the Beijing Dance Academy (http://www.bda.edu.cn/http://www.bda.edu.cn/) where Grace participated in a ballet class. The rest of us visited Tiananmen Square.

We visited the Great Wall of China at Badaling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badaling) on Sunday morning and the Ming Tombs in the afternoon. Words cannot justly describe the magnificence of The Wall, so I will wait until we are able to post pictures to provide more details.

We visited the Dingling Tomb, but did not have enough time to visit Spirit Way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_Dynasty_Tombs

On Monday we visited the Forbidden City and received an excellent guided tour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City). Since it was a beautiful day, we decided to walk back to our hotel (a distance of less than a mile) but ended up getting lost and taking a cab anyway. Next time we'll carry a better map!

I apologize for not posting pictures. We are having some technical difficulties uploading our pictures from our camera to my laptop. I hope to have it fixed soon and will post pictures soon. Mild jet-lag contributes to a lack of detail in this post as well.

We also hope to soon post video of Grace and Faith describing their adventure.

In the meantime, know that we are having a lot of fun, the food is excellent and the weather has been very comfortable.

Take care~

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Comments

[Cindy]

Sounds like you are all having a great time! Looking foward to pictures. :-)