What an amazing few days!

I first have to apologize for the tardiness of my post - there has just been so much going on and it has taken me a few days to recover from the flights and such! But I hope that this evening I will be able to fill everyone in on our journey and our time in Beijing so far.

Let's start at the beginning of our journey - last time I wrote I wasn't even in Vancouver. The trip from Grande Prairie to Vancouver was uneventful, as was checking in for our flight to Hong Kong on Friday October 24th. Mom and I eagerly waited at the airport - we were part of the smaller group flying out on the 2:55 a.m. flight on Saturday morning. I was able to sleep on the hour flight (we traveled 10,480 kms in an expected time of 13 hours and 44 minutes) but there was nothing comfortable about it.

Unfortunately, there were significant head winds impacting on our flight, and as a result, the flight took at least an hour longer than expected. This meant that the nine of us missed our flight from Hong Kong to Beijing. Linda Rammage was with us, so that set my mind at ease a little bit!

Canadian Airlines should take some lessons from Cathay Pacific - they were very accommodating after we missed our connecting flight. We were re-booked onto a 3:00 p.m. flight (we got into Hong Kong around 9 a.m.), and they gave us complimentary hotel room and lunch vouchers for our stay. Now, we didn't spend a great deal of time in the hotel rooms, but after a 14 or 15 hour flight, it was nice to be able to just sit down and relax, wash my face, and take a breather!

So, after a little shopping in the airport, a beautiful buffet lunch and time getting to know a few other delegates, we all got on the plane for Beijing. That flight was about three hours long (nothing compared to the Vancouver-Hong Kong flight), and finally, we arrived in Beijing!!

That was not the whole adventure, however! When we arrived, we made it through customs (which was quite an easy process, actually), and went down to the arrivals level to pick up our luggage. When we came to the baggage carousel, there appeared to be a few too many bags to account for the nine of us. This was quite accurate - in fact four of us had lost our luggage in transit between Vancouver and Beijing!

It was a long and drawn out process to fill out the documentation for the four of us who had lost our bags. Describing the type of luggage we had (Green 22 stands for a Green pull type suitcase of any size - just in case you were wondering!), ensuring that the names and addresses were correct - all of that took another 45 minutes at the Beijing airport!

Thank goodness Yan Jixin was waiting for us when we finally exited the airport. She was very patient, and when we found her she whisked us into the bus to take us to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel (Five star - it's a beautiful place), got settled in and had a bite to eat, and then it was off to bed. The only benefit of not having arrived on time was that we didn't have to try to stay awake during the afternoon - as soon as we got to our rooms we were able to fall asleep.

And fall asleep I did!