Greetings from Beijing!  We had a great flight from DC to Beijing, straight north from DC and over the north pole, so I still have never crossed the Pacific!  We made it to the hotel room before crashing thanks to our amazing guides.  Matt and Elizabeth fell asleep at about 6 pm here (6 am Eastern time), and Ginny and I got food and fell asleep at about 7 pm.  We all woke up between 3 and 4 am.  Although we had gotten about 5 hours of sleep in the 48 hours before, we are all feeling quite good.  Today we will tour the Great Wall and Forbidden City. Every person I’ve spoken to here is shocked that we are here to adopt a 4thchild, especially when they find out that we have a son.  Our hotel is beautiful.  We will be meeting our travel group in an hour for breakfast, and we are about 36 hours from meeting Thomas.  We are beyond happy and excited.

Great Wall October 29, 2011 order prints Touring the Great Wall was incredible.  I made it to the second tower and Matt and the girls went further.  The view is indescribably beautiful.   Ginny, the tourist attraction October 29, 2011 order prints As we went around the Forbidden City, the girls were constantly asked to pose in pictures with the Chinese tourists.  The girls were very shy about it which made it all the more funny and cute.  This picture is from about 3/4 the way through our tour when Ginny saw a little Chinese girl that she wanted a picture with (tourist attraction for our tourist attraction). Forbidden City October 29, 2011 order prints We had a wonderful time touring the Forbidden City today.  The Forbidden City is also fascinating.  Our group and guide are really great.  Beijing does not feel nearly as "foreign" as I expected.