We made it!

Wow, what a long trip!



From Indy to Detroit, it was a small plane, and we let Kenzie sit at the window. She wasn't scared at all - she was thrilled! It was all very exciting for her.



Then from Detroit to Tokyo - we were in the very back of the plane. Three rows from the back... that was hard, because the noise was so loud back there that she had trouble sleeping. She finally took a couple of short naps... and I got a couple of naps - but no sleep on the plane like we did previously. She breezed through the books she was supposed to read, and did most of the assignments her teacher gave her to work on so she could keep up with the class... She loved it. We now need to go out and buy a glue stick to have her work on another couple of projects.



In Tokyo - our friend Deb bought some water and gave Kenzie the coins. Kenzie was thrilled - she loves money of course, and this was different. So she considers these coins her "souvenirs".



The trip from Tokyo to Beijing was really pleasant, other than it was so late for us (I think total we had about 5-6 hours sleep, and Kenzie wasn't about to close her eyes on the plane. They also had individual tv's in the back of the seats, so I set her up with some cartoons to watch.



Grace, a young woman who picked us up at the airport, got us to the hotel. Poor little Kenzie fell asleep in the van on the way over to the hotel, poor baby. But she never fussed or cried, just rolled with the punches and took it all in stride. Trouble is, once we woke her up when we got to the hotel, she didn't want to go to sleep afterwards. I don't know, but at 1:00 am China time, Roy and I were beat.

We are staying at the Zhaolong Hotel, and I had mixed feelings about it... but I will reserve my final critique of the hotel after we have time to get to know it and get used to it. I guess my first impression wasn't good because we had booked a standard room with 2 double beds and a rollaway bed, and they tried to say we only got 2 double beds. We got the rollaway okay - we just need to make sure we're not charged extra, since we already paid for it.

So, we are up and ready to go out and explore a little. We don't have any kind of itinerary, but we'll see what we can do. Hope to have some interesting things to talk about.

And on Sunday, we fly to Harbin (I am told it has snowed there already, so I need to find a pair of boots for Kenzie to wear while we are here in Beijing. I had a pair for her in Bloomington, but being unfamiliar with the weather in Heilongjiang, I thought perhaps just because it was 30 degrees F it would be more like Indiana - where it can be that cold and never snow, or not snow much. Go figure!