Here in Beijing...

Well, 21 hours after we left our house, we were finally in Beijing.  The airplane ride was smooth...just very long.  The stretch from Dulles to Beijing is 13.5 hours and those last few hours are a doozy!  We are at the Peace Novotel Hotel and it is very nice just like I had remembered from last year.  The breakfast is good.  Yesterday was our first day of sight-seeing.  We went to the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Tieneman Square, Altar to Heaven, we visited a silk factory, took the Hutong Tour, and then ended the night with an acrobatic show.  The touring was really nice and we have our guide, Michelle all to ourselves since we are not in a travel group... but unfortunately, I had started to feel under the weather before leaving NC, and it turned into a sinus infection/fever/and overall achyness as if someone has beaten me up :o(
I haven't been sick in probably 2 years...what a bummer.  I was really hurting during the sight-seeing and on top of that, the weather was actually quite cold, which we weren't expecting...and a little rainy toward the end.  No sun to be found all day! 
I began my antibiotics I had brought, and I'm taking drixoral and ibuprofin.  Today we have woken up at 5:30a.m., which is better than yesterday when we kept waiting for morning to arrive by getting up at 12:00 a.m., then again at 3:00 a.m.  I think our body clocks are getting more used to the time zone. 
 
Today Michelle picks us up at 9:00 a.m. again and we go touring again... this time to the Great Wall, Summer Palace, and I'm not sure where else.  The sun is shining today, so that is good :o)
 
Tomorrow we take an afternoon train to travel to Tianjin.  It will take about 2 hours to get there and our new guide will be there to pick us up and take us to the Holiday Inn Tianjin.  The next day is Monday, and it is the day we get Ben.  I am really praying to feel all better by then so I can be a lot more "with it".  Brent and Susan are doing great.  We had a Chinese lunch yesterday and they both thoroughly enjoyed it. 
 
I hope this posts okay because I cannot access my blog (it's blocked), so I am posting remotely.  I'm attaching a few pictures, I hope they come through. 
Signing off for now...
Lisa