I am not calling housekeeping to figure out how to turn the lights on.

Hello from China! First, I need to apologize, I forgot our USB cord, so we'll have to buy one here, until then, no pictures.

The blogging site is also all in Chinese, so hopefully this comes out ok. Having warned you of that, let's chat...

Our trip went beautifully! We made all our flights and the time went by very quickly. Emily and Bob, we were laughing through "Wedding Crashers" for part of our trip thanks to you guys!
Interestingly though, I found that my feet and ankles swelled up about half way through our traveling! You should have seen my toes! They were like fat little sausages. It sort of concerned me. My body isn't used to sitting that long I guess. Josh had me doing toe raises and calf stretches to try and get the blood circulating! No headaches and no puking, no even close to it! I will take fat feet over puking any day! Seriously though, the traveling was a piece of cake. We were amazed at the ease of it all!

So here is now I am going to do this. I want to start each blog with a quote. Today's is about when we first got to the hotel. Which is very swanky! Unbelieveable! Everyone is wearing uniforms. The women are all beautiful, like models, here at the hotel! Anyway, we got to our room last night around 11pm. And we could not figure out how to get the lights to turn on. We would get them on and then about 30 seconds later they would flip off again. We have our pride you know, neither one of us would call to figure out how to use the lights! Josh finally figured it out. What you do is slide your room key into this slot and leave it there, then you have to flick on this master switch and the lights will work. If you take the key out the room thinks you are gone and turns the lights off. Great energy conservation! It took us awhile to figure that out. For while we had to open the door and let the hall lights provide us enough light to see things!

We have an easy day today. We were able to walk around Bejing today. It is just beautiful and I so love it already. I imagined myself entering China with open arms, trying to absorb everything that I can. And that is precisely what I intend to do! We went to a department store that is walking distance from the hotel. 4 women dressed again in an elaborate uniform come out of the doors and make this presentation to the crowd before openning up the doors. Then they line the walkway when you walk in, bow and say something to you and you walk past. The employees also line the escalators, bow and say something to you as you get on. Very formal. They had a person standing at attention in front of every section of the department. When you walk into their section, they will approach you and assist you with anything. Neat! Everything so far has been very clean. We also found the "night life" street. It has a bunch of pubs. Josh and I want to go there one night and get a drink, just to check it out. Of course Josh is looking to try a new beer or two. There was a group of guys sitting out on the street there as we walked by, I didn't hear it, but one of the guys lit a cigarette and said, "Hey, Hot Mama!" to me! HA! Funny! That made me laugh. Josh got a kick out of it.

Today we meet two other couples here and we'll go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, then on the an Acrobatic Show. I cannot wait. I am feeling really good today. Josh is sleeping now. He woke up early, excited, and had trouble getting back to sleep.

Oh, also, I found my contacts. For the family we've already emailed. YAY! AND to my mom and Dad and all of you that put together the beautiful book for Josh and I, thank you so much! We openned it today. We love you guys so much. We chose to read a page a day!

Ok, I will write more soon!

Kate

Whoops, this ended up down here. But Josh and I also thought we would chose a person or two a day that really caught our attention.

Our favorite person so far today: Man on the roadside fixing a bike. He had like a little station set up there down this one side street. I wanted to take a picture of him, but didn't, I worry that people won't like it. Need to get over that. The bikes here are like this graceful flow of people gliding by. I could sit on a bench and just watch people ride their bikes along. For example, an older man almost got hit by a car, but he just made a swift and smooth swerve, not jerky or annoyed at all... just a slide to the side, a wide arch, and then off again, without bating an eye. The car didn't honk, just slipped past the bike. Really, for a big city, there isn't the craziness that I expected. It is also very quiet I feel like. I don't know, so far, I love it.