Flying to China

We flew to Chiago from St. Louis at 9:00am on Saturday morning. When we arrived in Chicago, we found we had a 2 1/2 hour delay on departing to China. After waiting almost 3 hours, we boarded the plane in high hopes to quickly fly to China (in 13 hours). As we approached Beijing we found that there was a severe thunderstorm around the area, and the airport had been shut down. We circled the airport waiting for air traffic control to tell us we could land. Unfortunately we found ourselves on a 1 hour flight to Taiyuan about 300 miles away from Beijing. Instead of sitting on the plane for 13 hours, we were on the plane for 15 hours and hadn't even arrived in Beijing. After sitting in Taiyuan for over 2 hours, we were allowed to fly back to Beijing. We were on the plane for over 18 hours. After we went through quarantine, immigration and baggage customs, we met up with our CHI coordinator, Elsie. Because we were hungry, we quickly ran into a KFC only to find that it was closing and no food left. Next door, we found a Starbucks (my favorite) and ordered a sweet croisant, chicken sandwich and apple juice. Surprisingly, the apple juice tasted like watermellon jolly ranchers! After an exhausting day we arrived in our new home at midnight Beijing time.

Waking up to a new enviornment, we headed down staris to a western style breakfast buffet. After eating, we headed out to busy Beijing in search of clean water. We went to a 7-11 and stocked up on bottled water. After that we went into a Friendship store (like a Chinese mall).

Today we hope to visit the CHI Beijing office. Then we will be off to Tienamen Square and the Forbidden City. Later we are going to watch a Chinese Acrobatic show and have Peking Duck for dinner. Hope to be in contact the rest of our trip.