12 Hours at 35,000 feet

The flight over from Newark was pretty uneventful. We went west over the northern coast of Greenland and about 60 miles from the North Pole. I took a few pics from the plane, some interesting topography. I missed a nice photo op of the Arctic Ocean though. I dozed off, and when I looked out we were passing some water, and the cloud cover was clearing. By the time I got the camera out the clouds returned. We were on a 777 with little screens on each seat back and access to the whole movie library for "Movies on Demand". It was great! Everyone just passed the 12 hours watching various movies. I watched Harry Potter 2 and 3, the Sound of Music, and parts of a few other movies. The boys also stayed entertained.

Gary and I slept some, Chris and Craig, not at all. The only event on the flight that was even remotely exciting was a lightning strike on the wing on our side as we bagan our descent. There was a loud pop and a flash. The flight attendant standing near us was a bit concerned looking, but there was no announcement of impending doom, so everyone went back business as usual.

The Beijing airport is beautiful, very clean. And the terminal we came into was very quiet, so different than the hustle and bustle and piped in music of our larger airports. All flights came in pretty much on time or even a bit early. Michelle had a few minutes of panic when Jim (our host's husband) and I were not at the airport as she came in. Her flight was supposed to be about 30 -40 min late so we were not in a huge hurry to get to the airport. As we came into the terminal, there she was! Standing all forlorn, Blackberry in hand. Actually, she was only there about 5 minutes. So panic had not quite set in yet.

So we are all here now, we all had a good night's sleep, we are registering our passports at the local police station and then we are going to go to the Great Wall. We just watched the USA 400 Mens relay win by 0.08 second over France. WOW! Great swim! More later! Got to get the pictures posted.

L