After a long fourteen-hour flight from Dulles Airport we landed safely in Beijing around two pm on Wednesday. For those of you who wanted to know whether we were flying east or west, we actually flew north over Canada, Russia, Mongolia and into China. Ethan got a big kick out of watching us fly by the North Pole on the in-flight GPS map at our seats and generally did great on the trip considering the length of the flight and limited space to move around.
Just before leaving DC we meet another Bethany family, Alonzo and Nancy Henderson and their two daughters. The Henderson’s are from New Hampshire and are adopting nine and six year old siblings from the Sichuan Province. The children were found living on the street but little else is known about them. When they were found, the oldest was six and taking care of her little brother.
China is taking extra precautions with the H1N1 flu virus so upon arriving a team of government health officials went seat-to-seat taking each passenger’s temperature with an infrared laser gun prior to letting us off the plane. After deplaning, we went through a second heat sensing screening, turned in heath forms we had completed on the plane and then a third health checkpoint. The passport and visa checkpoint was no problem and since we had nothing to declare, customs was a breeze.
The new terminal at Beijing’s International Airport, opened during the Olympics, is a very spacious and modern building and our guide Joy met us with a shuttle to our hotel. We are staying at Chang An Grand Hotel, a contemporary hotel located in the southeast corner of the city near the 3rd ring and Chongwen District.
After checking-in, we made a quick trip to a local market for water. Even though the water in the hotel is likely fine to drink (and the rooms do offer a separate potable water faucet), we have been advised to always use bottled water while in China. Nancy and I then headed out to a local restaurant for some simple take out of pork dumplings, mushroom buns and fried rice and enjoyed a quite dinner in our rooms with Christine – Nancy’s sister and an angel for agreeing to come on the trip with us to help take care of Ethan – before crashing for the evening.
Having been up for close to forty hours, Ethan finally fell asleep on the way to the hotel from the airport and slept solidly until about five this morning. After a brief struggle to get him to swallow an anti-malarial pill (shades of me trying to swallow pills as a kid) we unpacked, enjoyed a traditional Chinese and European breakfast buffet and spent the day relaxing at the hotel. Our real activities begin tomorrow with a trip to Summer Palace.
Editor's note: While we can make some brief posts and upload photos directly from our iPhone, China blocks computer Internet access to the blog software we use so Alex Hughes is serving as our U.S. based correspondent for the longer posts I'm emailing him daily. Thanks Alex!
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