Travel

We made it. About 24 hours after leaving our hotel in Charleston, we checked into our hotel in Beijing.
Our flight from DC to Beijing was a little over 7000 miles. We had an all female crew piloting the plane.
We didn't actually fly over the North Pole, but we did fly over the Artic Ocean. With all the ice and water, I can't imagine the North Pole would look any different though. (I looked for polar bears, but didn't see any.) Flying into Beijing, we saw some wicked looking mountains just outside of the city.
On the actual flight, we had 2 meals and 2 snacks. The 2nd snack was a bowl of noodles (like ramen noodles). We were given both silverware and chopsticks. We all ate it with the chopsticks to get in practice.
We had a basket of flowers waiting in our room - compliments of our guides.
Once we got here, we had about an hour to rest, and then our guide took us to buy water. (You can't drink the water, so we have to buy it.) We walked to a store about 10-15 minutes away. The streets were cleaner than I thought they'd be. I felt quite lost in the store - it was like an IGA. Saw Coke and Pepsi, but no Mountain Dew.
Now the rooms are a little different. There's no power in them, unless you're in them. Once you come in, you have to slide your room key in a slot on the wall - that turns the power on. Since we only get one room key - you can't leave it on if you leave. If you're out of the room for very long, it gets hot and has to cool back down each and every time you come back.
I think there's only one TV channel in English, and it's CNN, so the boys watched part of a movie tonight in Chinese.
We ate dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. We ordered hamburgers. I'm not sure what they were made out of though, because they didn't taste like any hamburger I've ever had. They weren't bad - they were just different. Drinks were warm - can't have ice - ice is made with water. (Unless the ice has holes in it, then it's been made with filtered water.)
We have a full day tomorrow. We're leaving here early in the morning and not coming back until evening. We have tours all day.