China: Day 1

It's midnight. Christmas Day, 2006. Our bags have been packed and repacked, weighed, shuffled and repacked. My house is clean--hopefully for a potential buyer, and definitely for some Ohio friends who will come up for a weekend while I'm gone. My brain is fried and my body tired, so I'm going upstairs for a few hours sleep before the journey begins.

Melva and I will head to the GR airport at 8:15 tomorrow morning. Our flight takes off at 10:30, arriving in Chicago at 10:15--thanks to the first of many, many time changes we'll encounter tomorrow. A little after noon, we'll board the plane for a THIRTEEN hour flight to Beijing. Our game plan is that exhaustion will help us sleep through a good portion of the flight. I hear we'll be flying over the North Pole on Christmas Day. How cool is that?!?

We'll land in Beijing at 4:30 in the afternoon on the 26th. So much for Christmas! Our friends will meet us at the airport and we'll head to a hotel for dinner and an early bedtime. We'll visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmin Square on the 27th. We won't likely have internet access until at least the 28th, but hopefully we can make some posts after that.

Thanks to all that have made this trip possible, and especially to my neighbors Sandy, Caleb and Beth for taking great care of Bailey and watching over my house while I'm gone. Jared and Tina, enjoy your stay!

Merry Christmas!