December 8 & 9

Wow! Where to start ... first of all we did make it to Beijing - FINALLY. We left home at 4:20am and upon our arrival at the KC airport found that we were being re-routed because the flight we were supposed to catch to Newark was delayed and we were going to miss our Beijing connection. After 30 minutes of "issues" trying to rebook our tickets we were finally re-routed to Houston then on to Tokyo and finally to Beijing. No big deal. Well we get to Houston and they tell us that the flight going to Tokyo has been delayed 1 hour and 15 minutes. We only had a layover of an hour and a half in Tokyo. They are telling us that if we miss the flight to Beijing in Tokyo they will put us up in a hotel etc. Any other time a night in Tokyo would sound fun. Thursday though I was starting to panic that we might miss the Beijing portion of this trip. Now we are 0 for 2 flights. The bright side of this situation is we met up with another couple in our travel group Keri and James Martin. It was fun being able to spend time with them. The Houston to Tokyo flight finaly takes off and we have an ETA into Tokyo for 20 minutes before our Beijing flight leaves. After a VERY long 14.5 hours we arrive in Tokyo and are doing serious speed walking through the airport. We get to the gate only to be told - yep the flight going to Beijing was not going to get out and they had to route us on a different airline. We are now 0 for 3 flights. They get us re-routed on Japan Airlines and we meet up with Keri and James again. The flight from Tokyo to Beijing was only 4 hours, but seemed like an eternity. They served dinner and asked if we wanted Japanese or Western style. I (Tammy) being not at all adventurous with food chose western. Ended up eating only the steamed rice. There was potato salad with fish type stuff next to it and then the chicken was cooked with shrimp and the salad was - well odd ... By this time I was really hungry - thank goodness for good ol peanut butter crackers. ;o)We finally got to our hotel about 11:30pm (instead of the original 3:15pm). We got our computer set up and - no internet access. I wanted to cry. Not only could we not post, but neither could we call anyone because we are calling from our computer. After I recovered and began to think again we decided to just call it a night and go to bed. We were exhausted!! In our hotel we were greeted by a beautiful boquet of flowers from our guides and a run down of today's events. Then we tumbled into bed and were surprised to find that our bed was little more than a low diningroom table with a table cloth, pillows and comforter. I have never slept on such a hard bed before. Tired as we were it did not matter. We laid down and in short order were sound asleep.So the travels were definitely an adventure. We will certainly not forget this trip to Beijing. We have a few pictures from the travel side of things. The post for Day 2 (12/9/06) covers our antics for today! We are so close to our daughter! I so cannot wait to see her. See pictures at our Yahoo! group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gettingmackenzie
Love,

Glen & Tammy