Wednesday, November 18th (According to Joy)

We left for the airport at 7:40am. We met up with C+D at the check-in counter.

After a short 1-hour flight, we arrived in Newark, NJ for our "2 hour layover." We ate lunch a McDonald's and a deli in the food court. We boarded our flight for China around 11:45am and then sat and sat and sat on the plane until around 2:15. The fuel pump had to be replaced on the plane, so we all had to get off. They gave us each $8 credit for food. We had already eaten lunch, so we went to Ben & Jerry's to get ice cream. We only used up 2 vouchers, so we used one to buy bottled water and the other to buy bottled sodas.

We were originally told that we would probably board at 4:30, but we didn't board until 5:30. Once we boarded, we still had to wait for the new flight crew to come and get their paperwork transferred, but we finally took off at 6:45.

The food on the plane was okay, but it was combinations of foods. I was glad that I asked for the children's meal for Jordan. The strangest thing was around 2:00am (eastern time), they brought around hamburgers and vanilla ice cream (Haagen Daz). We had pretzels with drinks, supper, the bizarre snack in the middle of the night, and breakfast.

We finally arrived in Beijing at 9:15pm local time (8:15am eastern). We originally expected to arrive in Beijing at 3:30pm local time.

We were met by Lisa (our guide in Beijing) and taken to the King Wing Hot Spring Hotel. It is very nice, although, the room was about 90 degrees when we got into the room. We quickly turned off the heat and opened the window. It took a while for the "sauna" to cool down before getting to bed just before midnight (local time). [Only Stefan is still awake and will be going to bed very soon.]

Tomorrow we will meet for breakfast at 8:00 and start our sightseeing adventure.