Yesterday

OK, we've all slept a lot last night and are feeling more rested. To recap yesterday, here goes: we woke up at 4 a.m. and packed up the van to head to the Beijing train station for our 8 o'clock train to Taiyuan, Shanxi. The train station was ginormous! Bigger than any other train station I have seen. And SO NOT handicap accessible! We had to drag our suitcases and Betsy filled stroller up and down multiple escalators. Let me tell you, when you are married to an elevator/escalator guy, that's not a good thing. He kept talking about lawsuits in the USA, and how this would NEVER fly in the USA. We finally made it onto the train and got settled.







It was a three hour train ride and man-oh-man was it fast!




So, you do the math.... Let's see, if a train is traveling at 306 km/hour, and Betsy starts to get cranky and mom has not had her coffee, how fast is that in miles/hour??? Not fast enough, I think!

We saw some incredible scenery as we flew past little villages, rice fields, and nuclear power plants....













We made it to Taiyuan and got off the train. Now the adventure really began! We met our Holt guide, Maggie, and she led us out of the train station. Picture this: seven of us dragging suitcases and a stroller. Ray is probably the tallest man many Chinese people have ever seen, not to mention that he's not Chinese, three little Chinese girls, one Chinese woman, and a Caucasian mom and teenager. And we are all snaking our way through traffic, mud, construction, mopeds, bicycles and thick crowds of Chinese people all gawking at us and taking pictures with their cell phones! We wondered if we were WALKING to the hotel??? It was hilarious! We finally made it safely to the van and checked in to our hotel.

More later. Ray just told me that Kari is awake and crying.



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