I'm in China!

I made it! Here's some pictures of the team in the airport shuttle and a few looking out my hotel room. It has been about 26 hours since leaving Nashville and we just checked in to our hotel in Beijing. It's actually Tuesday morning here. Our flight got in at 5am Tues morning. It's like time travel. Flying all night was the best idea for a 12 hour flight because we slept pretty much 9 of those hours. Not that it was comfortable sleeping but it was sleep and it made the flight go by so much faster. The last 3 hours when I was awake went by slow but they showed GI Joe which is a pretty cool movie so that helped. I was wedged in the middle seat between two guys that I'm pretty sure didn't speak English. They never spoke to me so I'm assuming they didn't. Which was fine with me cause I was so tired, I fell asleep before the plane even took off - I woke up and we were in the air and I was thinking "when did we take off?" I've never fallen asleep for a takeoff before. But it was pretty much 4 am Nashville time when we got on the plane so that would explain the tiredness. Thankfully the seats were much wider than the ones on my earlier flights so I had a little room to move. By the time we were about an hour away - I was started to get a little closterphobic (I'm not sure that's how you spell that). I was happy when we finally got off the plane. The rest of the team sat together farther back. I was sort of separate because my flights got book later than all of theirs. But we were all asleep anyway so it was ok. Since it was so early in the morning, the airport was practically empty which meant we breezed through. We were met at baggage area by our guide Lily and we loaded up into a van and headed to the hotel. I was very glad it was early cause looking out the window from my hotel room now, traffic looks insane (see photo). But we got here just before the craziness. I think it's about 40 degrees out so not as cold as I was expecting. I'm happy about that. We are going to rest up a bit, shower and then meet in the hotel lobby at 11:15am and go sightseeing at a place called Temple of Heaven. We'll have lunch near there and then shop in some sort of market later. And of course, get to bed early tonight to attempt to get adjusted to China time. We're pretty much on the opposite time schedule here so while y'all are sleeping there, we'll be awake here and vice versa. I remember when I went to the Philippines - it was easier to adjust to the time here than it was when we came back home. I think it'll be the same way here. It's light out so my body is already telling me I should be awake. And I did sleep for 9 hours off and on on the plane. 

Anyway, I'll keep this brief. Just wanted to let y'all know I made it safely. And our luggage all made it through all the transfers too. The Lord's favor is all over us - thanks for praying!

We travel to Chifeng tomorrow and for the next 5 days after that, we will be loving on kids in the orphanage there. I will upload pictures and updates as much as possible:)

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