Arrival in Beijing

This blog title is all wrong and has been wrong for more times than its been right. But unless I learn how to migrate blog posts or change the domain name, it looks like I am stuck.

I left friday morning, after getting immunizations thursday afternoon. I had called for our upcoming trip to east africa.  I knew we needed yellow fever for two of the three countries we would be in. But the initial nurse convinced me to determine for both trips. I was quite early for east africa but a little late for beijing/seoul. Even though I assured the teavel clinic nurse(who was super rude,  condescending and unnecessarily thorougg)  we were barely leaving the city, she was insistent on getting several new immunizations. (It also encouraged me to find out about my childhood immunizations, which had me on the phone with my old pediatrician, high school, college and grad school, which was a trip. Grad school, the last one I called, had it, which saved me from a few extra shots.).

So I'm sitting on a 12 hour plane with a very sore arm. Not a fun start, but overall it worked out all right. I watched 4.25 movies(so also I like can't watch most shows/movies anymore without closed captioning because I'm like 85, hense the .25) and 3 episodes of tv.  Highly reccomend that billboard movie and marshall. And I can't believe I'm saying this but you can skip victoria and abdul. (I LOVE anything female royal England and I just couldn't with this one).  Home again was the other movie I watched, which was simply a palate cleanser between the two heavier movies. Best part is the house reese witherspoon lives in.

So now to Beijing. Customs seemed to be a breeze. The taxi ride took forever and the smog(combination of the plants and a big sand storm in the gobi desert) was thick. David and Farrah(we are staying with Farrah's mom in Beijing) arrived right after me, settled my taxi and I was brought to the house. It is situated in a gated community. The houses have a very Americam town house kind of look to it. It's called the town manor, there isnt even a chinese name for it. It's very nice!  I even have a room to myself!  I was hungry so Farrah's mom whipped up some fried rice.

To give Farrah and her mom a break from hosting, David and I went for a walk and found a park nearby to walk around. To combat jetlag, I made myself stay up until 8pm. The walk helped. They made David and I dinner, but didnt eat themselves. It was chicken soup(featuring chicken feet), broccoli and mushrooms and an egg tomato dish.

Before I hit bed, I was able to use a VPN to access American websites that would otherwise be blocked. I am hoping it continues to work!  A classmate of mine was here last week and the VPN worked fine for her!

I headed to bed before 9. Knowing we had a day of the forbidden city ahead of us!