Arrived in Beijing!

Brian and I arrived in Beijing yesterday afternoon. What an amazing adventure already! The flight was not nearly as bad as we had anticipated. 14 hours goes quickly with all the free food and entertainment the provide. Upon arriving to Beijing, we were amazed at the efficiency and order of the airport - everything moved so quickly. Upon exiting the gate arrive, we felt like celebrities with all the Chinese lined up with signs to pick up friends and guests. It seemed like the papparazzi!

We took about 1 hour drive to our hotel and were amazed at the planfulness of everything in Beijinng. The stretch of highway leading to downtown Beijing had miles upon miles of planted trees, shrubs and flowers. It was nice to have this (planned) landscape to look at because traffic was pretty bad. It didn't seem to bother our driver who used the shoulder of the highway as a fourth lane!

The other thing we noticed on our drive was the "fog"...it wasn't until we saw the big orange ball of sun peek through the "fog" that we realized it wasn't fog, but smog! If you ask a local, they will call it fog / rain, but in speaking to some ex-pat Americans it is definitely smog (more on that later).

We are lucky enough to have a friend here in Beijing from America who is working for a pharma company in China. He invited us to his home last night and we spent hours talking about the Chinese culture and business world (more on that, too)! It was a great introduction to Beijing and hopefully set us up for a great week. We also are excited to meet up with Chris Colley, another Moravian grad from '02 (Brian's year), who is living in Beijing. We will meet up with him on Saturday before we leave for Shanghai.

All in all, we were successful in staying up for 30 hours straight. While this part was grueling, it has been totally worth it as we are now acclimated to the time change and ready to start our day!

We are about to leave to hike the Jinshanling-Simatai part of the Great Wall so don't have too much time to write now, but we plan to share a few posts this evening. Stay tuned!
-Brian and Jaime