Beginning the voyage! ...somewhere over northern China at this point - or maybe Siberia? Who knows. It was a thirteen hour flight from Detroit to Beijing, but somehow I settled right in [thank God for my walkman!] We left the US on a Friday afternoon and arrived Beijing the next night (Saturday). Returning to theUS was really weird though...we took off from Beijing at 10am on Sunday and landed in Detroit at 9:50am that same day, ten minutes before we had left... It's a challenge on the internal-clock, that's for sure. For me, the trick to not getting too messed up by the time change is simple: The moment you get on the plane, CHANGE YOUR WATCH TO THE TIME ZONE YOU ARE LANDING IN - and just accept that it IS that time and deal with it. Trust me! It helps!

Our Chinese tour guide was a guy named Wang. Of course, there are probably a few million men named Wang in China, so we called him "Jack." Behind him is Mr. Lee - our bus driver...

It's a Beijing Field Trip! The yellow hats are a dead giveaway. By the way - it was C-O-L-D that day!!! And on this day, the wind in Beijing would put Chicago to shame. Bbrrbrrbbrrrrr rrrrr rrrrrRRRrrrrRRRrrrr!!!!!!

Members of our group on the bus... We had all kinds of people in our tour group, ranging from grad students to retirees.

Tiananmen Square...the heart and center of Beijing...famous and infamous...we were not permitted to walk on the Square during the week of our visit since the People's Congress was in session. Quick World History Review (feel free to skip it if you are not interested): the People's Congress is made up of representatives from each Communist Party Local Unit, using a system much like the caucus system here in the US, the Local Units make their own rules, then send representatives to meet Regionally, the Regional Unit sends representatives to the Provincial meeting and each Province sends representatives to Beijing once a year to assess the current five year plan and revise it as necessary. Bottom Line: we had a lot of important Communist Party mucky- mucks sharing the city while we were in Beijing, which made security even tighter than normal. (More Tiananmen Square pictures are on the next page)

This plaque explains the next photo.