Planes Trains and Automobiles

From 2009-06-06

Well... we've arrived, but not without a little drama!! :)

Our day started (well, actually Wednesday never ended - didn't get to sleep) at 3:30am JT picked us up and drove us to the airport. There we were greeted by our amazing sister-in-law Shannon with a great "Bring Addie Grace Home" poster. Never saw that coming! Can't believe she came out SOOOOO early.

From 2009-06-04

We checked in and headed to the gate... we were supposed to leave at 6am to fly to Chicago to connect on a 12:40 flight non-stop to Beijing. Easy, right?! Nope... at 6:30am, United officially canceled our flight to Chicago and said "sorry, we can get you on a flight tomorrow." Immediately (after we awoke Alec)...

From 2009-06-06

...we found a Southwest flight that left at 8:05 for Chicago. We managed to sprint through the terminal, get our bags back from United, purchased 3 oneway tickets to Chicago (not in our plans) and made it to the gate in time. Oh yeah... for those of you SW flyers, this airline doesn't go to O'Hare, where our next flight happened to leave out of...

SO... God sent us an angel named Cindy who happens to work for United and was on her way to Rochester.

From 2009-06-04

She overheard our conversation and said, "I know how to get you from MidWay to O'Hare quickly..." She was so sweet and allowed us to tag along with her. We caught a bus about 30 minutes after we landed in Chicago and were at O'Hare in plenty of time for our flight.

Oh yeah, they delayed that flight, too. We ended up taking off for China at about 2:40 (2 hours later) but arrived safely in Beijing at 4:40pm on Friday.

From 2009-06-06

After a quick temperature check to make sure we didn't have swine flu... we were allowed to deboard the plane...

HUGE airport...

From 2009-06-06

Our first glimpse of the amazing Chinese carvings...

From 2009-06-06

We met up with our guide, Alison. And she escorted us to our hotel. We're staying at the Renaissance in Beijing (very nice). And tomorrow bright and early, we're off to site see at the Forbidden City, Tienanmen's Square and the Great Wall. Should be amazing.

Traffic in Beijing on the way to the hotel...

From Web Photos

Right now, Kelly and Alec are sacked out and I'm about to pass out myself (Our day started over 30 hours ago, and we haven't slept since Tuesday night). We want to keep you all informed, so I'm going ahead and posting this without pictures (Kelly and I haven't figured out how to do that from China yet - bummer..) but we'll keep working on it.

We love you all... thanks for your prayers and support. Only 2 days to Addie!

Ken

ok...this is Kelly here now...Ken forgot to mention a couple of "funny" things that happened...The number of our flight that was canceled was "666"4...I'm certainly not superstitious but really???
Oh, and in the midst of trying to schedule another flight out of Nashville...Ken had run out of the gate, but we didn't know which way he had gone (I mean sister was flat out flying through the airport in my flip flops but I could NOT keep up with Ken)...so we waited before we left the gate only to find Ken flying back around the corner..the Security guards were yelling at him to "STOP" but he was so frantic he kept running...they kept yelling, and I ran towards him before they pounced on him...seriously ken...you did NOT want to end up in jail!

ok...all is well...we just had breakfast... more pics later!

Thanks for the Comments...we are LOVING them!
off to tour Beijing!