Beijing. Brain back online.

Ahh. Nothing like 6 hours of sleep to make everything better.

The flights themselves were uneventful, and I think my husband slept 10 of the 12.5 hours from Detroit to Tokyo.
But, oh Tokyo. For future reference, no matter what your travel agent says, 1 hour in Tokyo is not enough time for a family of 5 to change gates. There was another round of passport checks and baggage checks in Tokyo, despite the fact that we did not change airlines. Hong Kong was much, much easier; I don't think I would go through Tokyo again. In the security line, Devyn decided she had had enough and began to whine, "I want somebody to carry me." Repeat 1000 times. And shoot me.

We finally cleared security with 17 minutes before scheduled departure. I did the only reasonable thing; I scanned the departure monitors for our flight and then stuck Eiley on a people mover and told her, "Follow the signs to gate 16. Run as fast as you can, and then make a big scene that your family is coming. Cry if necessary." She is the fastest runner of all of us, and she can cry on command. Another couple in our travel group, Roberta and Mark, also told them to hold the plane for us and for an even slower family of 5 -- children too little to run. Roberta and Mark left their 3 kids at home, allowing them to be more nimble. But it sure would have been fun to have all those kids here!

We had a fabulous breakfast this morning. Eiley started breakfast by immediately breaking the safe beverage rule. Note the tall glass of cold orange juice in the breakfast photo. I told her we could give her a dose of Levaquin or we could just use her as an experiment. I'm not necessarily concerned about the juice itself, but more about the water in which the juice holder and juicing machine is washed. Devyn got to have her favorite food group: pork. She had bacon, ham in lemon sauce and a pork baotzi (BOW - tsuh). Mia did a lot of fretting about her food choices, but only had eyes for the baotzi and custard buns (or Custer buns, as they were labeled) once she found them.

We went on a neighborhood walk and found a little convenience store where we bought Nestle milk boxes, Coke Light, and the fabulously weird Lay's International Flavor Potato Chips. Really, the trip here was worth it for the chips. Frito-Lay executives, if you are listening, please start selling these chips in Texas. And after I have eaten them for a year, sell the Weight Watchers version of them. I am currently sampling French Chicken Flavor, with Mexican Tomato Chicken Flavor, Cucumber Flavor, and Braised Pork Ribs Flavor on standby. I like these chips so much, I took pics of them. At our now favorite little store, there was a beautiful, fluffy cat lounging behind the counter. I'm happy to report that Chinese cats respond to tongue-clicking noises just like American cats. Mia said, "Aww, what a sweet cat. DEVYN DON'T TOUCH HIM." This is Mia, the animal lover. She is a tiny bit germaphobic, and she might use our entire stock of hand sanitizer today.

The air conditioning doesn't seem to work in the rooms, but works in the hallways and lobbies. We were told that there is a conductor problem for the room air conditioning, but they would give us a "flighter." Scott went back and forth with the front desk lady, trying to figure out what a flighter was, so she finally drew him a picture: an electric fan. I am currently blogging while enjoying our flighter.

My herd is getting restless to go out and explore, so I'll finish up for now and post some more pics. We are going to take the Hutong area rickshaw tour.