Ni hao Beijing

Sept 10th --We arrived in Beijing at 9:20 a.m local time. (We are 13 hours ahead of CDT) The flight went well. The kids slept the entire way. Mike and I didn't sleep but more like rested, and enjoyed several movies on the plane. So that always helps. Once arriving in Beijing, it took us about an hour to get through all the necessary stops: medical release where they took our temperature, passport/visa check, luggage and then customs. Luckily, we had arranged a car service through our apartment, so when we exited the driver was waiting for us. After picking up a couple of drinks, we were in the car and on our way to the apartment. We arrived at the apartment about 11:00 a.m. The apartment complex is run more like a hotel so it has a reception desk where we checked in. We then went up to the 10th floor to our apartment. It is very nice with 2 bedrooms, bath and kitchen area. After getting settled in, everyone was tired and hungry. So we went downstairs where we decided to just eat in the restaurant inside the complex. It was good and quick. I thought I was literally going to fall into my salad at lunch. We came back upstairs and I quickly climbed in bed. Mike had decided that he wasn't that tired so he was going to power through the day. He was going to head out and go to the grocery store. Before leaving, I asked him to put on a movie for the kids. Well, I was sound asleep before the movie was even on. I had no idea when Mike left or came back. At one point, Abby woke me up because the volume wasn't working and I noticed that Austin had fallen asleep right beside me. I had sat the alarm for 4:00 so when it went off, I got myself up. Mike was back from his adventure out. I went looking for food and all he had brought back was bread, bottled water and one coke. This is where his story gets funny, of his first outing in Beijing... (this is Mike talking now). I headed out to find a grocery store. I had asked directions from the front desk, but they didn't provide much help. The street names were written in Chinese with poor handwriting. So I just started walking thinking I was bound to find one. I walked for about 20 minutes, crossing many roads which was a challenge in itself. There is no "pedestrian right of way"...its like a crazy game of Frogger. After getting far enough away from the apartment, I finally decided to turn around and regroup. I found a restaurant near the complex that had a nice outdoor seating area with trees for shade. I sat down and ordered a hot tea. As I sat there drinking my tea, I fell asleep. Luckily, I woke up when my head hit my chest. Not sure I wanted to fall asleep in the city by myself. I decided I was more tired than I thought so I better get up and walk around some more. I circled the block and found a very small grocery store (like the size of a 7-11). Unfortunately, nothing was in English and so I ended up with water, a coke and bread as I was too tired to figure anything else out. (Back to Amy) After hearing about his adventure out, we had to work really hard at getting Austin to wake up. Once he finally did, we all headed out the door to the Lufthansa Center, a large shopping mall, which was about a 20 minute walk. This was the kids and my first experience of the Beijing roads. We quickly learned that cars go every which way and do not stop for pedestrians. We safely made it to the Lufthansa Center where there was a grocery store at the bottom floor. We navigated our way successful through the aisles finding all kinds of groceries in English and even many American items. After paying our bill, we spent the majority of the walk back to the apartment trying to figure out how it was so expensive; especially since we were only carrying 3 bags. When we got back to the apartment, we looked over the receipt and figured out that we must have been paying extra for everything to be in English (that and Amy bought a can of almonds that was like $18 :-()...reminder to always look at the price). By this time it was dinner time, so everyone ate, took baths and headed for bed early. With all of that said about our first day, being here really isn't as much of a culture shock as we expected. We were expecting it to be a lot worse, but for the most part everything is in Chinese and English. Now, with that said, had we gone from the States to here first, it would have been a total culture shock!

Sept 11th -- Today was about trying to get over jet lag and begin to acclimate to our surroundings. We didn't get out of bed until about 9:30 this morning. We all woke up at various times last night as we try to adjust to the time change. Once we did get up, we were pretty slow moving. We finally left the apartment around lunch time with the intentions of going to find something to eat. Our apartment is located in a business district, so there are numerous "fast food" Chinese restaurants around. We found one that was named "Hollywood" in English. While no one in the restaurant spoke English, they had a nice picture menu that allowed us to point and order. It was actually pretty good for fast food, but I guess it's pretty hard to mess up noodles and rice. After lunch, we headed back to the apartment to ask some directions and help on a couple of various issues. One of the items we wanted to work out today was getting a metro/bus pass. They indicated that they were sold at the metro stop nearby. Since it's about a 15 minute walk, I decided to head out on my own while Amy stayed with the kids. We also asked about a playground / park for the kids. The lady pointed out the side door to the apartment complex. We weren't sure she understood what were were asking for, but were shocked when we walked out the door and find a huge playground. Turns out, there is a bilingual pre-school that shares the courtyard and they use the playground for recess. What a great find! So Amy stayed with the kids playing while I journeyed to the metro stop to buy our passes. I found the metro station with no problem and approached the ticket booth. Unfortunately the lady at the booth spoke no English and I had not brought any of our guidebooks with the Chinese translations. I tried various hand signals but to no avail. I finally gave up and went over to the automated ticket machine. It had an English option, but unfortunately, no option to buy weekly passes, only single tickets. So, I headed back to the playground to meet up with Amy and the kiddos. When I got back, the school children were out for recess and of course Abby and Austin had found friends to play with. After many hours of burning off a little bit of energy, we went back upstairs to the apartment for dinner and catching up on the blog/pictures.