First post from CHINA!!!

We're made it! I'm so happy to have the first part of the longest traveling day over.  (The next one will be on our return trip which I'm dreading even more b/c we will then be trying to sooth Ms. Molly.  I'm selfishly praying for a calm child because from what we learned over the last 24 hours there isn't much room to "play" on flights with kids...it will be a challenge!!)

But back to the day at hand...We left Nashville at 11:50 a.m. and once we were in the airport we had time to sit and relax for a moment.  I treated myself to a box of Godiva chocolates and a diet coke!  It all works itself out!  Anyway, with a combined effort of Eddie and Ambre we avoided our first crisis of not having a memory card in my new camera!!!!!!!!  I just got this small point and shoot for the trip and unpacked it and took a few pictures which were fine.  At the airport we took 1 picture and it said "no more memory"!!!!!!!!!!  I immediately realized I had not purchased a separate memory card and if we didn't have one it would only hold 20 pictures at at time!  So Ambre had to leave work (after she just arrived b/c she took us to the airport), buy a memory card and met Eddie at the passenger pick up lane to give it to him.  I couldn't believe the airport didn't have one, but they didn't.  I looked and asked several people.  Everyone said no.   Now, I'm ready to take (and hold) up to 2,000 pictures!  So I feel much  better!  I'm sure it is something I could have bought in China, but I wasn't sure if it would be the same thing?  Why risk it!  So....thanks Ambre!!!  That was a huge save!

We flew to Detroit and were supposed to have a 2 hour layover.  But, we didn't leave at the expected time so that made us rush through Detroit to make our connecting flight to Tokyo.  It was hectic!!  We saw on the screen the plane was "boarding now" but we REALLY needed to use the bathroom. So we went ahead and took care of business and as we were in the bathrooms they were paging us by name "last call for Amy and Eddie Maze"!  Yikes!!!  So we booked it to the gate and made it! whew!  I was so parched!  I needed some water!  So this flight was the 13 hour joyful flight to Tokyo.  We were in the middle two seats of a four seat row.  It was pretty tight.  Eddie's a big guy, and I'm a big girl, so we had no room.  Plus I tried to cram my backpack that was crammed so full under the seat and it wouldn't fit all the way.  Too much stuff!  Eddie's seat wouldn't lounge back any, so he sat upright for 13 hours with some walking intervals thrown in for good measure!  We at several meals or "snacks" as Eddie put it!  They were decent, not terrible at all and we were hungry!

After that flight we went straight to our last flight that was also already boarding for Beijing.  That flight had slightly better seats and a small screen on each seat for movies/etc.  I watched It's Complicated and Eddie watched some alien movie.  We had another meal and landed in China after about 3.5 hours. 

We just got to the hotel, called mom and Ambre on Skype, took two sleeping pills, and are about to be asleep like the rest of the city!  We are looking forward to exploring tomorrow as it is a "free day".  I'm sure Eddie will decide on something to do that will be interesting. 

Thanks for all of your comments!  It really is fun to see who is reading along our journey with us while we're here!  If you are reading my blogs from facebook you can still comment, but I can't comment back.  Facebook and Blogger are both blocked websites in China so I'm doing this all through email.   The pictures are taking forever to attach to email, so I'm going to send this and work on sending pics tomorrow! 

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First post from CHINA!!!