Arrived in Beijing

we arrived yesterday to our hotel about 4 pm. the flight was not horrible but not easy either. just a quick note about the flight: the row we sat in had no window and the guy who sat in the window position of our row smelled so bad that he left a dense, toxic cloud of B.O. It was intense.

anyway, the hotel is great. the room has two single beds that are hard as rock and an interesting view of the highway and back of the hotel. we went to the "famous roast duck house" across the road f0r dinner last night and it wasn't bad at all although I don't recall ever having beef with such a weird textured. I was out cold by 8PM.

today we had a big american breakfast in the hotel restaurant with a bunch of other adopting couples from our group. everyone went off in their own directions after that. We went to a part of Beijing called the Hu Tong. It's a very old neighborhood with tiny, narrow streets and shanty town like houses. it was amazing. I got a lot of good video of that area. After that we went to the Heavenly Temple which was really beautiful as well as the grounds around the temple. Its really cold and foggy today and all I have are short sleeve shirts and no jacket because the weather forecast I checked online said 85. It was 90 here a couple of days ago. Tomorrow we go on an organized tour of the great wall and other sites with the group. It should be fun but to be honest I'm more interested in just getting to Nanchang and getting Sadie.

The air pollution is incredible. As someone in our group put it, the air is oppressive. We're going up to the room now to chill out for a while before meeting some people for dinner later. I think we're going to try going to go to the Friendship Store too later.
I'll post some pictures later.