Hi Everyone. We made it to China ok, but not without problems. First one was before we even left Omaha. When we got to our gate at the airport, there was a flight heading to Memphis that was either delayed at the distant end or in Omaha, not sure where their plane was. They said the plane was broke and that they would have to get another plane and that the repair part would take 2 hours to get there. Then told us our flight would be delayed for about half and hour. After awhile, they told all the people going to Memphis that they had a new plane for them and that they needed to go to the baggage claim, pick up their bags and check-in again for the new plane. Then they came on and said that our plane was going to be leaving out of the gate next to ours. Not long after that, they came over the intercom and said the Memphis flight was back on. So all those Memphis people came pouring back to the gate. I'm really surprised that no one lost it. I expected someone to go off at being jerked around like that. I believe that they gave them our plane and the one that showed up for them was given to us. Before we boarded, our flight was switched back to its original gate. Charlene and I just stayed in our seats the whole time waiting for the dust to settle. Fianlly we were in the air.

We got to Minneapolis just fine after that. Waited to board. Twelve hour in the air. Charlene fidgeted the whole way. The second problem came when we landed in Tokyo. When we had checked in at the Omaha airport, we noticed on the monitor that the flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo was delayed a half hour. At first we were'nt concerned. A little extra layover never hurt. We touched down in Tokyo we had 45 minutes to get to the next gate. The bad thing was (and I don't know why this is) we had to go through another security checkpoint. Luckily I had chosen the right line to get in. It was a little long but really thin on people. The other lines were shorter but jammed with people. Another couple coming over here to adopt couldn't believe how fast we made through the line. Stupid me (blame it on the long flight), I had to go through the metal detector 3 times. I kept taking things out of my pockets. The lady suggested my belt. On the third try, she pointed to my METAL watch. So obvious. Duh! When we got to the gate they had already started boarding. In fact there weren't many people in line to get on the plane. Most were already on board.

From Tokyo to Beijing was THE best part. Nice newer plane. It was smaller than the flight to Tokyo (that plane was a 747). It had video monitors in the back of every seat. On demand movies (a ton of them) that you could pause, rewind and fastforward. You could play games, check out the map of our flight. It also kind of felt like there was more room.