We made it to Beijing

Hello everyone, Well after a 2 1/2 shuttle ride, a 2 hour flight to San Francisco and another 12 hours to Beijing WE ARE FINALLY IN CHINA. All in all it was a fantastic day. Since I didn't sleep prior to leaving I slept very well. Mark on the other hand didn't enjoy his 12 hour hop across the ocean as much. Once arriving in beijing we found our driver and headed to our hotel. Opps I forgot that one of our pieces of luggage is missing. So poor Mark will just have to wash and alternate his 2 pairs of undies in the sink until we either get our suitcase delivered to us or make it to a store. I packed most of my clothes in my carry on in case this were to happen. I am counting my blessings right now because there wasn't a whole lot in that bag that we cant do without. So I guess we will be shopping for Mark tomorrow. I feel we are lucky though because another family is missing 4 pieces of luggage. Well once we got to the hotel we really starting noticing how different things are here. We had to insert our key into the wall in order to have any electricity in our room. We seriously thought something was wrong with our room and were headed back down stairs. A man from the US got on the elevator with us and I started up a conversation and he explained how to get the electricity to work. When he got off Mark looked at me like I was crazy (you see I spent my time on the plane meeting and greeting anyone who spoke English which was a minority believe me). He said I never talk to strangers at home but put me in a foreign country and all of a sudden anyone who speaks English becomes my best friend. haha Well we went down stairs to get a bite to eat. It was there that I got my first scolding. You see when we sat down our table was organized very beautifully with our place setting, napkin and chopsticks carefully placed on a stand to keep food from staining the table. Well when we sat down we ever so carefully moved everything aside so that we could place our menu in front of us and just unwind and talk. Apparently that was not a good choice for us to make. One of the waitresses came speeding over to our table, picked up my napkin and placed it on my lap with out saying a word. She also reset the table the way it was when we sat down. Oh my goodness was that a lesson learned. You don't mess with the table settings. They take their service very seriously. It was impressive though. The waitresses (we had 3 of them) kept coming over and refilling our cups with water from our water bottle what seemed like every time I took a sip. Mark order green tea and got this very tall glass of extremely hot water filled with green leaves. it took him a while before he was able to sip it and when he did he got a mouth full of green. It was funny. Anyways, I should get to bed. I do have email access so if anyone needs to email me feel free. At least here I have no problems. We leave first thing Monday morning (your Sunday night) to take a plane over to Annabel. I wil then post pics of her. I know that is what you are all waiting for anyway. Tomorrow is the Great wall of China and the Jade factory so I better get to bed. Kids, we love you and miss you already. Dont forget to feed the animals and be good for Carole. Joey the pics I included are of pickled snakes. I thought you would like that. Yum maybe we will try that for dinner tomorrow. Just kidding. God Bless, Tamara and Mark

Sorry everyone...we cant seem to get the pics to upload and it is way past time for us to go to bed. So we will work on it tomorrow. I also can't see what I post the way you all can. So some one post a comment and let me know if it at least looks like it is fitting the page properly. I tried to upload pics earlier. maybe they are there but I just cant see them. When we first logged on to Blogger we couldnt get it to show up in English because it was all in Chinese and we didnt know which button to push to change that because they were all in chinese too. haha