Day 1

This post (or lack there-of) is being written by Andrew as Maryanne is so dead to the world that I don't think anything could wake her up. We arrived in Beijing last night without incident and finally made it to the hotel room around 11:30pm local time. That means that we were awake for just over 24 hours. The good news is that jet lag doesn't appear to be a problem. Why then is Maryanne so tired you ask?

We spent a beautiful late fall/early winter day visiting (I say visiting, but others might call it our own "long march") Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and a Hutong neighborhood. Beijing is supposed to have some of the worst pollution of any city, but today was almost a perfect "blue sky" day as you can see from the pictures.

This is George, one of the local CCAI reps, holding up the flag for all of us to follow. Without this flag it would have been impossible to keep a group together as there were ten's-of-thousands of people doing exactly the same thing we were.
This pic doesn't fully capture the crowds, but it gives you some idea.

Looking at the entrance to the Forbidden City from Tiananmen Square.

Inside the Forbidden City.

Maybe tomorrow Maryanne will write more after we get back from the Great Wall.