I'm in China!

Hi Everyone,

Managed to get off ok, aside from being upset at heathrow a mix of saying
goodbye and fear of flying. This meant I ended up getting stared at alot
in the departure lounge!

As always the flight was much better than I thought it would be, although
the food was awful! The cabin crew were really nice though! I saw the
pilots when we got off the plane, they looked very studious and sensible,
they looked like they could fly planes, which is always good! Landing was
really smooth. We had a bit of turbulance in the air and as we were
decending I was expecting it to be a bit rocky but it was really good. I
watched Ratatoille, Nanny McPhee, Ugly Betty and Friends on the plane.
I had to ask a member of the cabin crew to translate the address of the
hotel so we could give this to a taxi driver. She didn't know where it was
and asked passengers to help her. Finally she brought a map over but still
was not sure, two chinese men became very interested in what we were
talking about and ended up helping and showing us the vicinity of the
hotel.
Rob was really pleased with BA, especially that they gave us socks 'that
means loads of new pairs of socks on this trip'.
When we went to collect our baggage a really really cute sniffer dog
licked my hand! We got a taxi straight from the airport, bit of a grumpy
taxi driver but I think it was because we both didn't understand a word
each other was saying!
First impressions of Beijing were that the motorway looked alot like
england. Don't know why but considering we were on the other side of the
world I think I expected everything to be completely different!
When we got to the vicinity of the hotel I decided based on Google earth
that we should walk in a particular direction, with really heavy bags.
Turned out this was completely the wrong direction. A really nice english
man must have realised that we looked completely lost and pointed us in
the right direction. However we then misunderstood these directions and
walked in the wrong direction again, finally a chinese man (again
realising we were lost) asked if he could help. He spoke english but did
not read it. He did get us to the hotel though! Yey for him!
After a sleep that Rob had problems getting me up from we went for dinner.
We decided we would go down to hou hai lake, but again my fault we walked
in completely the wrong direction. Realised at this point that my sense of
direction is completely fine the only problem was that I had managed to
rotate Beijing 180 degrees in my head! So am very glad that I have not
suddenly become someone who can't do directions, have just rotated a city
when I should not have!
Hou Hai lake looked amazing, it was completely covered in ice, which we
are hopefully going to go back and walk or skate on. People were skating
and walking and also they were sitting on chairs and pulling themselves
along with ski sticks, not sure what this is called!
We then walked (at first in the wrong direction) to the Goubuli restaurant
where we shared Braised egg plant, broccoli and garlic and pork and
mushroon dumplings. We overfaced ourselves and ordered too much! The food
was AMAZING, but I don't think thats the best you can get, which is
exciting! The whole meal including beer and coca cola cost us 6 pounds
together!!!!
We then wandered back to the hotel. Watched the english bbc world news and
went to bed at 9 because we were both still completely jet laged! We also
asked the receptionist to teach us how to say thank you!

Got us this morning at 5am as still obviously jet laged, just had
breakfast and now we're heading off to see ti'anamen square! VERY EXCITED!

My hands are freezing writing this so I'm off! Hope everyone is ok!

Lots of Love,

Sarah

ps its really really cold. Jimmy - what bar is the message in?