12/18/2001 - To China                                                          

About 48 hours ago on 12/18, we said good bye to our friend Elizabeth at Grand Rapids airport and started our trip to China. We had a quite long waiting at Detroit airport, but it was nothing to compare the 14 hour non-stop flight from Detroit to Beijing. We were all doing great at the beginning. Both Toby and Joshua read books, played game boys and computer games and watched some pieces of the three movies. Berthold and I did not like any of these movies, so we read books. I finally finished the book of "lost daughters of China" - a book talks about adopted Chinese girls and Chinese cultures. We napped as we got bored each of our activities. The last few hours of the flight were very difficult. The air on the plane was not very good after 400 people confined in it for such long time. We were unable to eat the last meal served on the plane. Joshua felt every sick after the plane landed and used two sick bags. He insisted to carry an extra bag with him as we walked away from the airplane.

As scheduled, we arrived Beijing at 5:30 pm local time on the 19th, 13 hours ahead of US time. It took a while until we cleared immigration check points because there were 4 other international flights arrived the same time. Our luggage was already waiting for us after we passed the check point. No one seemed to bother us as we go through the custom except a few taxi drivers.

Beijing airport is just like many other big international airports. Berthold felt quite comfortable got his ways around. He managed to get the hotel shuttle bus while I exchanged some money and bought a phone card to call my parents. As we got on the airport express way, we thought we were in Germany. The high way markers and signs reminded us the German autobahn. Berthold felt that he could have no problems driving in Beijing. By 7:30pm, we were at the Sino-Swiss hotel about 3.5 km away from the airport.