So after a nice long flight (about 11 hours), my flight landed in Beijing! We were an hour early, which was nice. After getting off the plane, I met up with Jeff and Carin, a couple from my tour group. They are from Connecticut and are super friendly.

We all went through customs together and multiple security checkpoints. We finally got to our transfer gate. We saw that there was free wifi but couldn't get on so Carin and I asked a guy in one of the shops to help us. We were able to get on so I could FaceTime my mom and Carin FaceTimed her son.

While we waited we met more people from our tour group. I met Katie and Maureen, a mother and daughter from the Bay Area who are both teachers. Katie now lives in Newport. I met Jordana, another single traveler and teacher from Philly. When we boarded the plane, we also met Vivian, our tour guide who will be with us throughout our trip.

I ended up sitting in front of Katie and Maureen on the flight. We were chatting about teaching and how things have changed. We then got served "breakfast." The choices were rice or eggs. I chose eggs. When I lifted the foil, I almost gagged. It looked like someone had barfed up gravy. Even by airplane standards it looked foul. I pressed on the light to call over a flight attendant. They gave me a quiche looking square that looked only a little more edible than the mush. I ate it only because I was hungry.

When we landed, we immediately went to baggage claim and met up with Nancy, who introduced herself as Nancy Reagan (as a joke.) Nancy is our local guide just through Shanghai. We met up with the rest of our group (13 total, 12 women and 1 man.) It turns out one woman missed her flight to Beijing and will have to meet up with us later.

Vivian and Nancy gave us our name tags and we headed to our coach bus. We were told our hotel rooms were not ready so we would do a small city tour until check in.

Our first stop was a part of Shanghai called the French Concession. We got some time to walk around on our own. The architecture is very European. There were a lot of cafes and restaurants like you would see in Europe or the U.S. There was a mix of locals and tourists eating and drinking outside. There was, of course, a Starbucks at the end of the street.

I walked around with Katie and Maureen. We walked near a park and some more of the shops and restaurants. We met up with the rest of our group around 1:00 but a bunch of our group mates were late.

We finally got to our hotel and checked in. I immediately tried to use my VPN codes I had purchased to try to get on Facebook but none of them worked. I finally gave in and went to my room.

I had a king sized bed with a huge bathroom with a separate tub and shower. I figured I should probably shower since it had been over 24 hours since my last one. I decided to take a nap after my shower and get a nap in before dinner and an acrobat show.

I didn't sleep much so I went downstairs and tried to get online again. I decided to buy a more expensive VPN service. After multiple tries, I was able to login to Facebook, Instagram, and, more importantly, Google! I still wanted to be able to check news from home and with Google and other news sites being blocked, it probably wasn't going to happen.

Our group met up around 5:30 and we headed off to dinner. The restaurant seemed pretty nice. We got a beef dish, rice, green beans, glass noodles, eggplant, and a pork dish. Everything was delish! All the ladies at the table tried a local light beer. I stuck with 7Up.

After dinner, we took off, in the rain, to an acrobat show called "Era." It was in a building that looked like Epcot. We showed up a minute or two late but we got to our front row seats in the round theater.

The show was amazing! I felt like a little kid, oohing and ahhing. There were girls doing handstands on bikes, guys jumping and doing flips on trampolines, women doing aerial acrobats, juggling of ceramic pots, a man balancing on an indo board while flinging bowls onto his head with his foot, a huge metal contraption that had three hamster wheels that guys were walking on top of as it spinned, and 8 guys riding motorcycles inside a big metal sphere. I was so tired by the time the show started but I loved watching it!

When the show was over, we headed back to the hotel. I immediately went to brush my teeth and it was lights out!