Hello friends and family!!! We are officially in China. We just spent our first night here at our hotel, and I know that more than a few of us woke up hours before our wake up call (it's only 5 pm at home...that's sortof disorienting). We have not experienced too much of China yet, but we've got a ton planned for today! We'll be visiting the Forbidden City in just a few hours.

Let us just quickly mention the plane ride here. I think we all agreed that those were some of the longest 13 hours of our lives. Just when we thought we were almost arriving, we'd check the flight path and see that we still had 9 hours to go. Nothing has ever felt so hopeless and monotonous.

But on the bright side, we are all here safe and sound, and each of us got our luggage. We will post again once we return from today's adventures.