We are here and what a trip!!

Well, as always, my trip was a trip. First off I made the bright decision to go ahead and just not go to bed at all Tuesday night since I had to get up and leave by 1:30am. I feared if I went to bed I would just get up groggy and be miserable on the drive down. Elijah was also unable to sleep and ended up doing the same thing. At about 10:30pm Tuesday night my daughter, Brandy, made the request that I please turn the television off as it was waking her baby. So I did,as it was waking her... not as much as me sneezing... but it was. But with the light off I began to start feeling tired.
Then I heard my son crying and when I went in my husband was changing his diaper and snapped at me when I asked if everything was ok. After that I decided we were leaving at 12:30am, a whole hour early. So we got to the airport at 2am, rather than 3am. When we gave up the rental car the guy told us they wouldn't even open to start check in until 4:30am. So we spent 2&1/2 hours roaming around a closed airport trying to kill the time. Fortunately they had a Salvador Dali display of jewelery he designed up so that took a little of the time and was interesting. We finally got to check in at 4am. Yeah, the Enterprise guy was off by a half hour in our favor.
So you think check in was easy. First the computer we had to work ourselves wouldn't show the last part of our journey so I had to wait for someone to come and help. And you know the rude people at the check in line kept cutting in front of us. Finally a lady recognized that we were still standing there and came to help us. She got our luggage checked through which was awesome... but then informed us that we would have to stop and get our boarding passes in California. Well... we did have a little over four hour layover so no biggie... Right?
So we make it to Dallas. Have breakfast at McDonald's and then arrive at our gate just in time for boarding to begin. Now let me mention here that I have worn, on this trip, a pair of high heeled shoes. I did this thinking all I had to do was walk between flights. I wasn't going to be doing any other walking. The shoes were easy to slip on and off and served their purpose at the airport security check points. But then you know how things tend to go for me... I should have known when I started to board the plan and got stalled by the cockpit and heard the stewardess talking about then having technical difficulty. I said "Oh please no. The last time I heard those words I was stuck on the tarmac for three hours. That was a Northwest flight." The lady quickly shot back at me, "Well, we are not Northwest." No they are American Airlines, right? But then the male steward behind her sarcastically responded, "Yeah, you will be stuck four hours." Very funny. So the plane got moving and suddenly it stopped and they announce that the number two engine had not started and they were returning to the terminal to have it looked at and make the decision if they would just fix it and let us go or put us on another plane.
Three hours later we were off that plane and on our way to another. By now my feet are singing the blues and we are having to hustle. But we do board the plane with the knowledge that we will land in San Francisco with one hour to get our boarding passes and board our flight. And let me tell you... it wasn't the worst. By the time I got our boarding passes and got through the international security where they lost and then found Elijah's boarding pass, my feet were blistered on the top of two toes and on the bottom balls of both feet. Yeah... like that. But we made it. As we approached the gate they said "Passengers in rows 45 through ?? , you may board now. And so we did. I was never so happy to sit down on an international flight and take my shoes off in all my life. We had made it by the skin of our teeth.
The flight was a good one. Elijah had a window seat to sleep next to and I had a chatty still grieving widow who went in and out of tears for the first two hours of the flight. Thank God for my Hospice nursing experience. It sure came in handy. I did finally get some sleep which helped get the flight time to pass. Thirteen hours is the longest on these flights. I was glad Elijah slept as the movies they played were not for kids... Well... Law Abiding Citizen... and some other equally as violent film. When those two were over they played Tinker Bell 2. LOL
But we made it. We were met by our guide and taken to our hotel and checked in. We went down and ate dinner and then came back to the room and passed out after getting all our electronics plugged in for charging.
Today, May 7th was a long day of touring. We ate breakfast at 6:30am and then went back to the room where we talked to everyone at home for almost an hour. Then we went down stairs to meet the guide at 8:20am. She was about 15 minutes late but she arrived with 5 other people on the tour. They were from India, Mexico and Brazil. All very nice.
First we went to the Jade factory, then the Great Wall where we rode a cable car up to an upper area of the wall and climbed from there. Then we went to the Cloisonne factory and had lunch after a talk about how cloisonne is made. From there we went to the Ming Tombs and then on to Dr Tea's for a tea ceremony where we tried 4 teas (all without sugar... yuck!!) and then were headed back to the hotel (it was not 6pm) when the guide asked if we would like to see an acrobat show tonight. There was dead silence. The whole van, except for me, had slept all the way to the tea ceremony place, so I finally spoke up and said, "I know that Eli and I would rather not. We are very very tired." Then everyone else piped up and said the same thing. I am sure the guide was happy because she informed me that we would have a new guide for tomorrow because she was not feeling good and needed to take a long rest.
We, fortunately, were the first to get dropped off. We went in, came to the room and downloaded the 100 photos we had taken and then headed downstairs for dinner at the Pizza Hut attached to the hotel. Elijah really isn't liking Chinese food and here they have things like "Popcorn Shrimp Pizza, Escargot, Squid," and so on on the menu. All he wanted was pepperoni pizza and they didn't have pepperoni anything. So I told him about how his Daddy loved the Hawaiian pizza and that was all it took. He ordered a personal pan Hawaiian pizza then promptly burned his fingers when they brought it to him and he tried to put it in front of him like a plate. Fortunately we were drinking fruit smoothies. His was Mango and pear and mine was blueberry and something that had me drinking little chunks I had to chew up with every sip... but was really good. Anyway, he was able to quickly fix his fingers by grabbing his ice cold glass.
After dinner we agreed we were too tired to swim and would just go to bed. And we did... NOT!! Elijah did. I had to get his letters he wrote typed up for his class and I wanted to post here for everyone else. So he has been asleep since about 9pm while I won't get into bed until after 11pm. LOL It's ok. I am doing pretty good so far. And today had my tennis shoes on so my feet didn't hurt once. My thighs... well... if you ever plan to go on the great wall... you better do a few months on the stair master to prepare for all the uneven stair steps.