Day 1

We arrived in Beijing around 3 PM after our 13 hour flight from Chicago. We wanted to be sure we stayed awake so we headed off to find a classmate at a hotel we thought was near by. We got directions from our hotel and set off walking only to find out it was the wrong hotel. With no mandarin, we wandered for almost 2 hours asking for directions with little luck – taxis said we were too close and other very friendly people weren’t entirely sure where the hotel was. Eventually, we gave up only to find out we were kiddy corner from the hotel. We then went and had a great meal of dumplings in a mall area.