All posts tagged: Hutongs

Beijing: My Overwhelming First Impressions of China

Well, we have arrived in Beijing, China and it is crazy! First let me recount our journey here. We packed up and left on Friday morning, Vancouver time. I had to chuckle when I noticed Greg’s had packed not one, but two travel pillows. As we walked the 200-m to the bus stop from Greg’s parents’ house we congratulated ourselves with a celebratory high-five. I looked over at his backpack and immediately noticed one of the travel pillows had fallen off. We had already lost an item, not more than 20 seconds into our trip. Too funny. The bus arrived promptly thereafter this moment so the pillow remains where it fell. We flew Air China and much to my misfortune I discovered my in-flight entertainment screen was broken. Did I mention this was a twelve hour flight? Flying north from Vancouver we actually passed over Comox (my hometown) which made me pretty happy and then onward past Alaska, Siberia and the Koreas. Beijing greeted us with a grey haze (which I am beginning to believe is character of the …