July 9th - Arrive in Beijing

It is Thursday evening here in Beijing. We arrived with no problems with amazingly smooth flight. We flew over Canada and down through Russia. The weather is wonderful about 85 and sunny. The smog is not too bad. Our hotel is BEAUTIFUL with a great indoor pool and nice work out room that Bill will make good use of. We have meet 3 other families. I believe there will be a total of 7 families traveling to Chongqing. One family brought their 8 year old son. We went to a Chinese grocery store with our guide (Joy) to pick up waters, cokes and a few snack. It was quite interesting as the store was 2 stories with tons and tons of food. Most shoppers looked like they were only shopping for one meal at a time- I did not see any grocery carts only little baskets. A few street folks actually started talking some broken english to us for practice. We tour Beijing tomorrow.