Getting to the Great Wall

Everything here in China so far has been new, exciting, and definitely different.

Standing in front of Chinese custom in Beijing.

Beginning with the very first step in our journey things did not go quite as planned. As soon as we got to the ticket lines in the Bangor Maine airport, our itinerary was changed sending us to a new city connecting to Beijing. After passing security, we were ready to board our plane to Detroit, but were confronted with an hour and a half delay from the original 12:20 departure time. Once we were finally getting on our plane destined for the Detroit airport, we then faced a thunderstorm on the ground in Detroit preventing any planes from landing. We were rerouted to Cleveland to wait in the Cleveland airport for a little over an hour only to board the same plane, headed for Detroit. After finally reaching Detroit we were then forced to fly in circles around the landing strip for about an hour while we waited our turn to land. Luckily there was scheduled a long enough layover in Detroit that we did not miss the next leg of our trip to Beijing. It was smooth sailing from there on out, in the 13 hour plane ride to the lovely city of Beijing. So I guess you could say the journey has ALREADY been interesting. A lesson in patience was definitely there for the taking.

  We then spent the first two days in China exploring Beijing. We started with nothing less than the great wall of China. I always knew that it was big, but pictures can not accurately describe how incredibly big, long and steep this amazing world wonder really is.  We were all thoroughly exhausted by the end of that day.